We examine policy rate recommendations of the Bank of Canada’s Governing Council (GC) and its shadow, the C.D. Howe Institute’s Monetary Policy Council (MPC). Individual recommendations of the MPC are observed but not those of the GC. Differences in the two committee’s recommendations are...

The paper examines whether central banks should be committed to achieving price stability (a low-inflation target), and how strong (explicit) their long-term monetary commitment should be. For that purpose we propose a game theoretic framework that enables us to model various degrees of...

Words are critical in how the public perceives the work of central banks and the quality of monetary policy. Press releases that accompany policy rate decisions and, where available, the minutes of central bank committee meetings, are focal points for the media in public discussions about the...

The paper examines whether central banks should be committed to achieving price stability (a low-inflation target), and how strong (explicit) their long-term monetary commitment should be. For that purpose we propose a game theoretic framework that enables us to model various degrees of...

We incorporate inferential expectations into the Barro-Gordon model (1983a) of time inconsistency and consider reputational equilibria. The range of sustainable equilibria shrinks as the private sector becomes more belief-conservative.

Leith and Wren-Lewis (2007) have shown that government debt is returned to its pre-shock level in a New Keynesian model under optimal discretionary policy. This has two important implications for monetary and fiscal policy. First, in a high-debt economy, it may be optimal for discretionary...

Discretionary policymakers cannot manage private-sector expectations and cannot co- ordinate the actions of future policymakers. As a consequence, expectations traps and coordination failures can occur and multiple equilibria can arise. In order to utilize the explanatory power of models with...

One way of evaluating how well monetary authorities perform is to provide the public with a regular and independent second opinion. The European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE) are shadowed by professional and academic economists who provide a separate policy rate recommendation...

Leith and Wren-Lewis (2007) have shown that government debt is returned to its pre-shock level in a New Keynesian model under optimal discretionary policy. This has two important implications for monetary and fiscal policy. First, in a high-debt economy, it may be optimal for discretionary...

We introduce financial market friction through search and matching in the loan market into a standard New Keynesian model. We reveal that the second order approximation of social welfare includes the terms related to credit, such as credit market tightness, the volume of credit, and the loan...