Historically, periods of high indebtedness have been associated with a rising incidence of default or restructuring of public and private debts. A subtle type of debt restructuring takes the form of "financial repression." Financial repression includes directed lending to government by captive...

Since the start of the financial crisis, industrial country public debt levels have increased dramatically. And they are set to continue rising for the foreseeable future. A number of countries face the prospect of large and rising future costs related to the ageing of their populations. In this...

The Canadian economy experienced an increasing rate of inflation during the last half of the 1960s.The latter part of this period; interest rates reached levels higher than had been experienced for several decades. This study attempts to explain how the levels of interest rates are determined and...

This article provides an overview of the taxation of foreign source income in Canada, the United States and Mexico and provides some empirical estimates as an example of the relative impact of a series of changes in Canadian taxation of foreign source income on (a) the change in the Canadian tax...

Following the experience of the global financial crisis, central banks have been asked to undertake unprecedented responsibilities. Governments and the public appear to have high expectations that monetary policy can provide solutions to problems that do not necessarily fit in the realm of...

The remarkable stability of low domestic inflation in many countries requires explanation. In this paper, a number of competing hypotheses are evaluated on a stand-alone basis, and all are found to be inadequate. This includes the view that this outcome has been solely the result of more...

This paper reviews the challenges faced by central banks in recent years in order to evaluate their policy implications going forward. To highlight the genuine uncertainty surrounding the lessons to be drawn, the paper examines recent experience through two intentionally polarised perspectives,...

In the economic environment that has been emerging over the last couple of decades, it is more likely that the occasional build-up of financial imbalances, typically in the form of unsustainable credit and asset price booms, will occur against the background of low and stable inflation, posing a...

This paper reviews analytical work carried out by central banks that participated in the Autumn Meeting of Central Bank Economists on "The evolving inflation process" which the BIS hosted on 28-29 October 2005. The paper first discusses efforts to document the univariate statistical properties...

This paper was presented as the 2006 W.A. Mackintosh Lecture at Queen's University. I consider some of the leading arguments for assigning an important role to tracking the growth of monetary aggregates when making decisions about monetary policy. First, I consider whether ignoring money means...