December 20, 2002
Monetary policy and uncertainty
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The Performance and Robustness of Simple Monetary Policy Rules in Models of the Canadian Economy
In this report, we evaluate several simple monetary policy rules in twelve private and public sector models of the Canadian economy. Our results indicate that none of the simple policy rules we examined is robust to model uncertainty, in that no single rule performs well in all models. -
Labour Markets, Liquidity, and Monetary Policy Regimes
We develop an equilibrium model of the monetary policy transmission mechanism that highlights information frictions in the market for money and search frictions in the market for labour. -
August 21, 2002
Monetary Policy and Uncertainty
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. -
August 18, 2002
The Role of Simple Rules in the Conduct of Canadian Monetary Policy
The third strategy employed by the Bank when dealing with uncertainty is the consideration of appropriate simple reaction functions or "rules" for the setting of the policy interest rate. Since John Taylor's presentation of his much-discussed rule, research on simple policy rules has exploded. Simple rules have several advantages. In particular, they are easy to construct and communicate and are believed by some to be robust, in the sense of generating good results in a variety of economic models. This article provides an overview of the recent research regarding the usefulness and robustness of simple monetary policy rules, particularly in models of the Canadian economy. It also describes and explains the role of simple rules in the conduct of monetary policy in Canada. -
Taylor Rules in the Quarterly Projection Model
In recent years, there has been a lot of interest in Taylor-type rules. Evidence in the literature suggests that Taylor-type rules are optimal in a number of models and are fairly robust across different models. -
November 14, 2000
Conference Summary: Money, Monetary Policy, and Transmission Mechanisms
This article summarizes the proceedings of a conference hosted by the Bank of Canada in November 1999. Three major themes emerged at the conference. The first concerned uncertainty about the transmission mechanism by which monetary policy affects output and inflation. The second concerned the potential usefulness of monetary aggregates in guiding the economy along a stable non-inflationary growth path. The third was the recent developments in dynamic monetary general-equilibrium models. The work presented suggests that a wide range of models is useful for understanding the various paths by which monetary policy actions might influence the economy. -
Probing Potential Output: Monetary Policy, Credibility, and Optimal Learning under Uncertainty
The effective conduct of monetary policy is complicated by uncertainty about the level of potential output, and thus about the size of the monetary policy response that would be sufficient to achieve the targeted inflation rate. One possible response to such uncertainty is for the monetary authority to "probe," interpreted here as actively using its policy response to learn about the level of potential output. -
Monetary Rules When Economic Behaviour Changes
This paper examines the implications of changes in economic behaviour for simple inflation-forecast–based monetary rules of the type currently used at two inflation-targeting central banks. Three types of changes in economic behaviour are considered, changes that are motivated by developments in monetary and fiscal policy in the 1990s: changes in monetary policy credibility, changes in […] -
Inflation Targeting under Uncertainty
This paper studies the implications of certain kinds of uncertainty for monetary policy. It first describes the optimum policy rule in a simple model of the transmission mechanism as in Ball and Svensson.