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When countries are hit by supply shocks, central banks often face the dilemma of either looking through such shocks or reacting to them to ensure that inflation expectations remain anchored. In this paper, we propose a tractable framework to capture this dilemma and then explore optimal policy under a range of assumptions about how expectations are formed.

The federal government and the Bank of Canada have been committed for some time to achieving and maintaining price stability as a way to foster a rising standard of living for all Canadians. To support this objective, the inflation-control target range of 1 to 3 per cent was recently extended through to the end of 2001. By then, the government and the Bank plan to announce a long-run target for monetary policy. In this article, the authors provide an overview of the most recent empirical evidence on the benefits of lower inflation. They draw on an extensive earlier survey and on work presented at two recent conferences on price stability hosted by the Bank of Canada. They find that, when inflation and tax interactions are taken into account, there are large benefits to lowering inflation. When these benefits are compared with the transitional costs associated with lowering inflation, significant positive benefits remain. However, the authors note that the extension of the inflation-control targets to the end of 2001 allows further research to ensure an operational definition of price stability that will help Canadians achieve a high standard of living.

Deputy Governor Timothy Lane explains how the Bank is helping Canadian households and businesses weather the COVID-19 crisis, and how our actions today are laying a solid foundation for our future economic recovery.

Rapid growth in emerging-market economies is driving up demand for commodities, and that has pushed up world prices for oil and many non-energy commodities. Meanwhile, productivity improvements in some countries and a competitive world environment are lowering the prices for some consumer goods, communications services, and computer equipment.

2003 Conference held on 10 and 11 July 2003 (papers in unedited, electronic format only)

Deputy Governor Sylvain Leduc discusses how upgrading Canada’s core payment systems will contribute to financial stability and help the Bank keep inflation on target.

As the title of the conference suggests, we have seen many boom-and-bust cycles in the commodity sector. This raises one obvious and central question: How can we avoid them in the future?

View the chronological list of crisis response measures the Bank of Canada took between December 12, 2007 and November 30, 2011.

Mr. Chairman, my colleagues and I always welcome our appearances before your committee. We released our latest Monetary Policy Report this past Monday. It covers a broad range of economic and monetary issues and provides an account of our policy actions and their results. The ultimate objective of Canadian monetary policy is to help create […]

From the end of 2008 to the middle of last year, Canada experienced a short, sharp recession. With the exception of government spending, all major components of aggregate demand declined, and industrial production dropped 15 per cent. Canadian exporters suffered particularly, owing to the sharp fall in the components of U.S. economic activity that matter most for Canada.