The author provides a non-technical explanation of the role played by the exchange rate in Canada's inflation-targeting monetary policy. He reviews the motivation for inflation targeting and describes the monetary transmission mechanism. Though the exchange rate is an integral component of the...

The Bank of Canada’s inflation-targeting framework, since its inception in 1991, has proven itself a success. Yet further improvements in the system should be considered seriously for inclusion in a renewed monetary policy agreement, between the Bank of Canada and the federal government, and...

Fixing measurement errors in the Consumer Price Index is a small idea that offers big payoffs to Canadians and the government. In this paper, the author says if the upcoming federal budget devoted the resources needed to improve Statistics Canada’s measurement of the Consumer Price Index,...

An essential element of the Bank of Canada's inflation-targeting framework is a floating exchange rate that is free to adjust in response to shocks that affect the Canadian and world economies. This floating rate plays an important role in the transmission mechanism for monetary policy. A...

Sticking with the status quo was only one option under debate among monetary experts in the lead-up to renewal of the Bank of Canada’s inflation-targeting mandate, which was announced this week. Several other routes were available. Two of them – namely, targeting nominal GDP or targeting...

The monetary policy arrangement in Canada has proven very successful. Despite many and varied economic shocks, the Bank of Canada has established the necessary conditions under which the annual rate of inflation, as measured by the rate of change of the Consumer Price Index, has remained very...

In fast-growing developing countries, rapid productivity growth is largely driven by economic growth. Consequently, an understanding of the reasons for this strong productivity growth requires a broader perspective on the dynamics of the overall growth process. In early 2012 Daron Acemoglu, an...

A confluence of factors promises to put pressure on the new Bank of Canada governor to direct monetary policy at fixing Canada’s so-called “overvalued” currency, according to a report released today by the C.D. Howe Institute. But in “The Seductive Myth of Canada’s “Overvalued”...

This paper empirically examines the view that wage rigidity in long-term labor contracts matters for the behavior of employment. In particular, I follow Bils's (1991) approach, which looks for systematic employment patterns in the first year of long-term contracts. Using a new panel data set...