The 1975–78 Anti-Inflation Program in Retrospect Staff Working Paper 2005-43 John Sargent The author provides an overview of the 1975–78 Anti-Inflation Program (AIP), in a background document prepared for a seminar organized by the Bank of Canada to mark the AIP's 30th anniversary. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credibility, Fiscal policy, Inflation and prices, Inflation targets, Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy implementation JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, E52, E6, E63, E64, E65
April 22, 2005 Borders, Common Currencies, Trade, and Welfare: What Can We Learn from the Evidence? Bank of Canada Review - Spring 2005 John F. Helliwell, Lawrence L. Schembri Recent evidence indicates that the intensity of economic exchange within and across borders is significantly different: linkages are much tighter within, than among, nation-states. These findings, however, do not necessarily imply that borders and separate national currencies represent significant barriers to trade that should be removed, since the evidence is also consistent with the alternative hypothesis, that domestic exchange is more efficient because domestic producers are better able to satisfy the requirements of local consumers, owing to common tastes and institutions and the existence of local information and social networks. Focusing primarily on trade linkages within and between Canada and the United States, the authors review the evidence on the extent to which national borders lessen the intensity of international economic linkages, primarily trade in goods and services, and the effects on domestic welfare. They also examine the evidence on the impact of common currencies on trade and welfare. They determine that, since the empirical models employed to date in this research cannot distinguish between alternative explanations of the evidence, it is not yet possible to draw firm conclusions for policy-making. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Exchange rate regimes, International topics, Monetary policy framework
November 24, 2004 Asset Prices and Monetary Policy: A Canadian Perspective on the Issues Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2004 Jack Selody, Carolyn A. Wilkins The issue addressed in this article is the extent to which monetary policy in Canada should respond to asset-price bubbles. The article concludes that maintaining low and stable consumer price inflation is the best contribution that monetary policy can make to promoting economic and financial stability, even when the economy experiences asset-price bubbles. In extreme circumstances—when an asset-price bubble is well identified and likely to have significant costs to the economy when it bursts—monetary policy might better maintain low and stable consumer price inflation by leaning against a particular bubble even though it may mean that inflation deviates temporarily from its target. Such a strategy might reduce the risk that a crash in asset prices could lead to a recession and to inflation markedly below target in the longer run. The circumstances where this strategy is possible will be rare because economists are far from being able to determine consistently and reliably when leaning against a particular bubble is likely to do more harm than good. Housing-price bubbles should be a greater concern for Canadian monetary policy than equity-price bubbles, since rising housing prices are more likely to reflect excessively easy domestic credit conditions than are equity prices, which are largely determined in global markets. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Inflation targets, Monetary and financial indicators, Monetary policy framework
Monetary and Fiscal Policies in Canada: Some Interesting Principles for EMU? Staff Working Paper 2004-28 Virginie Traclet Choosing a well-designed framework for fiscal and monetary policies is a challenge for economic authorities. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E5, E58, E6, E61, E63
May 22, 2004 Exchange Rate Pass-Through in Industrialized Countries Bank of Canada Review - Spring 2004 Jeannine Bailliu, Hafedh Bouakez Economists' long-standing interest in the degree to which exchange rate movements are reflected in prices was rekindled in the 1970s by a combination of rising inflation and the adoption of more flexible exchange rate regimes in many industrialized countries. Specifically, there were concerns that a large currency depreciation could degenerate into an inflationary spiral. Such fears were curtailed in the 1980s and early 1990s as industrialized countries began to reduce and stabilize their inflation rates. The low-inflation period most industrialized countries entered approximately a decade ago coincided with significant exchange rate depreciations that had much smaller effects on consumer prices than expected. This led to a belief that the extent to which exchange rate movements are passed through to consumer prices has declined. In this article, the authors examine why pass-through could be incomplete and review empirical estimates to determine whether pass-through has indeed declined, suggesting possible reasons for this decline and discussing the implications for monetary policy. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Exchange rates, Inflation and prices, Monetary policy framework
Alternative Targeting Regimes, Transmission Lags, and the Exchange Rate Channel Staff Working Paper 2003-39 Jean-Paul Lam Using a closed-economy model, Jensen (2002) and Walsh (2003) have, respectively, shown that a policy regime that optimally targets nominal income growth (NIT) or the change in the output gap (SLT) outperforms a regime that targets inflation, because NIT and SLT induce more inertia in the actions of the central bank, effectively replicating the outcome obtained under precommitment. The author obtains a very different result when the analysis is extended to open-economy models. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E58
Simple Monetary Policy Rules in an Open-Economy, Limited-Participation Model Staff Working Paper 2003-38 Scott Hendry, Wai-Ming Ho, Kevin Moran The authors assess the stabilization properties of simple monetary policy rules within the context of a small open-economy model constructed around the limited-participation assumption and calibrated to salient features of the Canadian economy. By relying on limited participation as the main nominal friction that affects the artificial economy, the authors provide an important check of the robustness of the results obtained using alternative environments in the literature on monetary policy rules, most notably the now-standard "New Keynesian" paradigm that emphasizes rigidities in the price-setting mechanism. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, E5, E52, E58, F, F3, F31
Bank Lending, Credit Shocks, and the Transmission of Canadian Monetary Policy Staff Working Paper 2003-9 Joseph Atta-Mensah, Ali Dib The authors use a dynamic general-equilibrium model to study the role financial frictions play as a transmission mechanism of Canadian monetary policy, and to evaluate the real effects of exogenous credit shocks. Financial frictions, which are modelled as spreads between deposit and loan interest rates, are assumed to depend on economic activity as well as on credit shocks. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E4, E5, E51
Nominal Rigidities and Monetary Policy in Canada Since 1981 Staff Working Paper 2002-25 Ali Dib This paper develops and estimates a dynamic, stochastic, general-equilibrium model with price and wage stickiness to analyze monetary policy in Canada. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E32, E5, E52
August 21, 2002 Monetary Policy and Uncertainty Bank of Canada Review - Summer 2002 Paul Jenkins, David Longworth Central banks must cope with considerable uncertainty about what will happen in the economy when formulating monetary policy. This article describes the different types of uncertainty that arise and looks at examples of uncertainty that the Bank has recently encountered. It then reviews the strategies employed by the Bank to deal with this problem. The other articles in this special issue focus on three of these major strategies. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Monetary policy and uncertainty, Monetary policy framework