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An economy with fixed amortization mortgages and borrowing-constrained consumers leads to the level of inflation targeted having real effects on home ownership, consumption, and debt. Using a life-cycle housing tenure choice model, we show that by front-loading real mortgage payments, higher inflation lowers steady-state home ownership and the mortgage-debt-to-income ratio.

How do deglobalization and rising trade costs affect monetary policy? A two-country, multi-sector model of Canada and the United States shows that bilateral trade-cost shocks generate a manageable inflation–output trade-off under the existing framework — but larger or more persistent shocks would make look-through policies costlier and riskier.

Beginning with a review of the adoption of inflation targeting in a broad group of countries, Paulin focuses on changes in the design of inflation-targeting frameworks in light of fifteen years of accumulated experience. Included in the discussion are the use of numerical targets and ranges, the policy horizon, supporting institutional policy structures, and communication, including the publication of forecasts. A recurring theme is how much flexibility an inflation-targeting regime allows. The article concludes that the changes made to the frameworks have been relatively modest since their adoption, but in concert with the improved credibility that has resulted from central banks meeting their inflation-control targets, they have allowed an increasingly nuanced response to economic shocks.

This paper examines the contribution of several supply factors to US headline inflation since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify six supply shocks using a structural VAR model: labor supply, labor productivity, global supply chain, oil price, price mark-up and wage mark-up shocks.

The Bank of Canada today released the document Renewal of the Inflation-Control Target: Background Information, which provides additional details on the target arrangements and on how the Bank plans to implement them in order to increase the predictability of inflation over the longer term. This release follows the announcement yesterday by the Government of Canada and the Bank that the inflation-control target is being renewed for a period of five years to the end of 2006.

We analyze factors that may explain consistent answers to questions about inflation expectations in the Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations. We also compare the inflation forecasts of consumers with consistent responses with those of professional forecasters.

How can Surveys of Professional Forecasters (SPF) be used to improve inflation forecasts? By using US historical quarterly data on SPF forecasts, we provide better understanding of how we can use forecast disagreement to improve our own forecasts.

Conference held on 22 and 23 July 2008 (papers in unedited, electronic format only)

The Canadian economy has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past decade. And it has emerged as a low-inflation economy, with declining levels of public and foreign debt and a private sector that is more cost-conscious, productive, and efficient, thanks to restructuring and investments in new technology.

We summarize the review and renewal process at four central banks (Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Bank of England, Sveriges Riksbank and the US Federal Reserve Bank) and compare them with the process at the Bank of Canada, which has been well-established since 2001.