Michael Irwin is a Senior Economist in the Financial Stability Department at the Bank of Canada. His interests include macroeconomics, household finance and labour. His research focuses on how credit markets and labour markets shape macroeconomic outcomes. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the Ohio State University.
This note examines how monetary policy responses to shelter inflation affect both the overall economy and different households. We find that the aggregate macroeconomic effects of responding to shelter inflation are modest, whereas the redistributive consequences across households are substantially larger.
This paper studies how unsecured consumer credit impacts the extent to which unemployment insurance (UI) policies smooth aggregate consumption fluctuations over the business cycle. Using a general equilibrium real business cycle model, I find that unsecured credit amplifies the extent to which UI smooths cyclical consumption fluctuations.
