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This article summarizes the proceedings of a conference hosted by the Bank of Canada in May 1997. The first conference held by the Bank on this subject was in 1993, two years after the introduction of inflation targeting in Canada. The 1997 conference revisited many of the analytic issues related to price stability that had been examined at the first conference, while also considering several additional questions. This time, with the extension of inflation-control targets beyond 1998 under consideration, particular emphasis was placed on the role and design of those targets. The conference also featured a round-table discussion among practitioners of monetary policy in three inflation-targeting countries—New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Their remarks, which focussed on the experience with inflation targets, bring out very clearly the common challenges facing monetary policymakers in open economies.

Responses to the autumn survey suggest that the Canadian economy is recovering, as all indicators of business activity have increased since the summer survey. However, because firms continue to expect activity to pick up only gradually, they remain cautious regarding investment.

The past five years have indeed been a period of great and relatively rapid economic change, both here in Saskatchewan and across the country. In my remarks today, I'd like to describe this change and discuss its significance to our economic well-being.

This special issue, “Real-Financial Linkages,” examines the Bank’s research using theoretical and empirical models to improve its understanding of the linkages between financial and macroeconomic developments in the wake of the recent global financial crisis.

This paper evaluates the effects of high-frequency uncertainty shocks on a set of low-frequency macroeconomic variables that are representative of the U.S. economy. Rather than estimating models at the same common low-frequency, we use recently developed econometric models, which allows us to deal with data of different sampling frequencies.

Following growth of 1.7 per cent in 2012, the Canadian economy is expected to grow by 1.8 per cent in 2013 and 2.7 percent in 2014 and 2015, and to reach full capacity in mid-2015, as anticipated in the April Report.

Globalization is in retreat, yet digitalization is on the rise. How will these trends impact inflation?

This note provides an update on Bank of Canada staff’s assessment of the Canadian neutral rate. The neutral rate is the policy rate needed to keep output at its potential level and inflation at target once the effects of any cyclical shocks have dissipated. This medium- to long-run concept serves as a benchmark for gauging the degree of monetary stimulus provided by a given policy setting.

This monthly newsletter features the latest research publications by Bank of Canada economists including external publications and working papers published on the Bank of Canada’s website.

This paper studies the effects of financial development, taking into account both formal and informal financing. Using cross-country firm-level data, we document that informal financing is utilized more by rich countries than poor countries.