E02 - Institutions and the Macroeconomy
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An Overview of the Indigenous Economy in Canada
Several measures suggest economic outcomes have improved for Indigenous Peoples in recent decades. Yet, institutional settings and gaps in infrastructure and financing continue to hinder their economic progress. Recent efforts have helped address some data gaps, and new institutions are helping Indigenous communities to overcome historic barriers to growth. -
The Central Bank Strikes Back! Credibility of Monetary Policy under Fiscal Influence
Central banks in many advanced economies enjoy a high degree of independence, which protects monetary policy decisions from political influence. But how should independent central banks react if pressured by fiscal policy-makers? We examine whether a central bank should design a monetary policy framework that prescribes acting conditionally on how fiscal policy behaves. -
Canada’s Monetary Policy Report: If Text Could Speak, What Would It Say?
This note analyzes the evolution of the narrative in the Bank of Canada’s Monetary Policy Report (MPR). It presents descriptive statistics on the core text, including length, most frequently used words and readability level—the three Ls. Although each Governor of the Bank of Canada focuses on the macroeconomic events of the day and the mandate of inflation targeting, we observe that the language used in the MPR varies somewhat from one Governor’s tenure to the next. -
Monetary Policy Uncertainty: A Tale of Two Tails
We document a strong asymmetry in the evolution of federal funds rate expectations and map this observed asymmetry into measures of monetary policy uncertainty. We show that periods of monetary policy tightening and easing are distinctly related to downside (policy rate is higher than expected) and upside (policy rate is lower than expected) uncertainty. -
Noisy Monetary Policy
We introduce limited information in monetary policy. Agents receive signals from the central bank revealing new information (“news") about the future evolution of the policy rate before changes in the rate actually take place. However, the signal is disturbed by noise. -
November 17, 2016
Structural Reforms and Economic Growth in Emerging-Market Economies
Growth has slowed in many emerging-market economies (EMEs) since the 2007–09 global financial crisis, reflecting both cyclical and structural factors. In this context, it will be in-creasingly important for EMEs to raise potential growth by maintaining steady progress on structural reforms. How do structural reforms generally support growth? What are the re-form priorities for EMEs over recent history and today? Finally, what will be the impact of planned structural reforms on potential output growth among the world’s larger EMEs? These are some of the questions considered by the authors. -
Credit Conditions and Consumption, House Prices and Debt: What Makes Canada Different?
There is widespread agreement that, in the United States, higher house prices raise consumption via collateral or possibly wealth effects. The presence of similar channels in Canada would have important implications for monetary policy transmission.