E52 - Monetary Policy
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The Zero Bound on Nominal Interest Rates: How Important Is It?
This paper surveys the literature on the zero bound on the nominal interest rate. It addresses questions ranging from the conditions under which the zero bound on the nominal interest rate might occur to policy options to avoid or use to exit from such a situation. We discuss literature that examines historical and country evidence, and literature that uses models to generate evidence on this question. -
On Commodity-Sensitive Currencies and Inflation Targeting
Two aspects of the recent monetary history of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand stand out: the sensitivity of their dollars to prices of resource-based commodities, and inflation targeting. This paper explores various aspects of these phenomena. -
Identifying Policy-makers' Objectives: An Application to the Bank of Canada
In this paper, we develop a new way to test hypotheses about policy-makers' targets, and we implement that test for Canadian monetary policy. -
Probing Potential Output: Monetary Policy, Credibility, and Optimal Learning under Uncertainty
The effective conduct of monetary policy is complicated by uncertainty about the level of potential output, and thus about the size of the monetary policy response that would be sufficient to achieve the targeted inflation rate. One possible response to such uncertainty is for the monetary authority to "probe," interpreted here as actively using its policy response to learn about the level of potential output. -
Greater Transparency in Monetary Policy: Impact on Financial Markets
Measures have been taken by the Bank of Canada to increase the transparency of Canadian monetary policy. This paper examines whether the greater transparency has improved financial markets' understanding of the conduct of monetary policy. -
Monetary Rules When Economic Behaviour Changes
This paper examines the implications of changes in economic behaviour for simple inflation-forecast–based monetary rules of the type currently used at two inflation-targeting central banks. Three types of changes in economic behaviour are considered, changes that are motivated by developments in monetary and fiscal policy in the 1990s: changes in monetary policy credibility, changes in […] -
The Quantity of Money and Monetary Policy
The relationships among the quantity theory of money, monetarism and policy regimes based on money-growth and inflation targeting are briefly discussed as a prelude to an exposition of alternative views of money's role in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. The passive-money view treats the money supply as an endogenous variable that plays no role […] -
Inflation Targeting under Uncertainty
This paper studies the implications of certain kinds of uncertainty for monetary policy. It first describes the optimum policy rule in a simple model of the transmission mechanism as in Ball and Svensson. -
The Exchange Rate Regime and Canada's Monetary Order
It is a mistake to debate the merits of alternative exchange rate regimes for Canada independently of other features of the monetary order. A coherent order requires a well-defined goal for monetary policy, one that the authorities are capable of achieving, and that anchors private sector expectations. For it to be liberal, the relevant authorities […]