Monetary Policy
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Canada’s Monetary Policy Report: If Text Could Speak, What Would It Say?
This note analyzes the evolution of the narrative in the Bank of Canada’s Monetary Policy Report (MPR). It presents descriptive statistics on the core text, including length, most frequently used words and readability level—the three Ls. Although each Governor of the Bank of Canada focuses on the macroeconomic events of the day and the mandate of inflation targeting, we observe that the language used in the MPR varies somewhat from one Governor’s tenure to the next. -
The Distributional Effects of Conventional Monetary Policy and Quantitative Easing: Evidence from an Estimated DSGE Model
This paper compares the distributional effects of conventional monetary policy and quantitative easing (QE) within an estimated open-economy DSGE model of the euro area. -
Frictional Capital Reallocation I: Ex Ante Heterogeneity
This paper studies dynamic general equilibrium models where firms trade capital in frictional markets. Gains from trade arise due to ex ante heterogeneity: some firms are better at investment, so they build capital in the primary market; others acquire it in the secondary market. -
A Framework for Analyzing Monetary Policy in an Economy with E-money
This paper considers an economy where central-bank-issued fiat money competes with privately issued e-money. We study a policy-setting game between the central bank and the e-money issuer and find (1) the optimal monetary policy of the central bank depends on the policy of the private issuer and may deviate from the Friedman rule; (2) there may exist multiple equilibria; (3) when the economy approaches a cashless state, the central bank’s optimal policy improves the market power of the e-money issuer and can lead to a discrete decrease in welfare and a discrete increase in inflation; and (4) first best cannot be achieved. -
Credibility, Flexibility and Renewal: The Evolution of Inflation Targeting in Canada
In 1991, Canada became the second country to adopt an inflation target as a central pillar of its monetary policy framework. The regime has proven much more successful than initially expected, both in achieving price stability and in stabilizing the real economy against a wide range of shocks. -
December 6, 2018
Year-End Economic Progress Report: Financial Vulnerabilities in Focus
Governor Poloz talks about how household debt levels and housing markets played a role in the latest interest-rate decision. -
The Impact of Surprising Monetary Policy Announcements on Exchange Rate Volatility
We identify a few Bank of Canada press releases that had the largest immediate impact on the exchange rate market. We find that volatility increases after these releases, but the effect is short-lived and mostly dissipates after the first hour, on average. Beyond the first hour, the size of the effect is similar to what we observe for other economic releases, such as those for inflation or economic growth data. -
Does US or Canadian Macro News Drive Canadian Bond Yields?
We show that a large share of low-frequency (quarterly) movements in Canadian government bond yields can be explained by macroeconomic news, even though high-frequency (daily) changes are driven by other shocks. Furthermore, we show that US macro news—not domestic news— explains most of the quarterly variation in Canadian bond yields. -
November 5, 2018
Making Sense of Markets
Governor Poloz discusses how the Bank uses financial market information in its monetary policy. -
Evaluating the Bank of Canada Staff Economic Projections Using a New Database of Real-Time Data and Forecasts
We present a novel database of real-time data and forecasts from the Bank of Canada’s staff economic projections. We then provide a forecast evaluation for GDP growth and CPI inflation since 1982: we compare the staff forecasts with those from commonly used time-series models estimated with real-time data and with forecasts from other professional forecasters and provide standard bias tests.