The debate about whether Canada should seek some form of monetary integration with the United States is surveyed. It is argued that the choice here is among overall monetary orders, rather than among exchange rate regimes considered in isolation, with particular attention needing to be paid to...

The economic integration of North America, unlike that of Europe, has no parallels on the political front, and U.S. economic and political interests are world-wide, while those of Canada and Mexico are predominantly regional. These facts have important implications for the degree of policy...

From Henry Thornton (1802), through Walter Bagehot (1873) until Ralph Hawtrey (1932), the lender of last resort function was central to the theory of central bank behaviour. In that role, the bank was urged to aid individual banks in times of crisis, but also and crucially to provide liquidity...

Specific ideas about the Fisher relation between real and nominal interest rates and more general ideas about the nature of the central bank's duty to support the financial system in times of crisis were important to the Monetarist re-assessment of the causes of the Great Depression and what...

Milton Friedman's contributions to and influence on macroeconomics are discussed, beginning with his work on the consumption function and the demand for money, not to mention monetary history, which helped to undermine the post World War 2 "Keynesian" consensus in the area. His inter-related...

John Crow's 1988 Hanson Lecture argued for making price stability the goal of Canada's monetary policy, but in the early 1990s, political and economic circumstances led policy makers to settle for a 2 percent inflation target instead. The recently instituted review of the Inflation Control...

Successes and failures in monetary policy stem mainly from coherence or lack thereof in the monetary order, rather than the tactical skills of policy makers. Crucial here are questions of consistency among the economic ideas that the policy regime embodies, the way in which the economy actually...

The debate about Canadian-U.S. monetary integration is surveyed. The choice is among overall monetary orders,rather than exchange rate regimes and questions of policy credibility and political accountability are crucial. Canada's recent economic performance under inflation targets, and arguments...