E6 - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
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Should Central Banks Adjust Their Target Horizons in Response to House-Price Bubbles?
The authors investigate the implications of house-price bubbles for the optimal inflation-target horizon using a dynamic general-equilibrium model with credit frictions, house-price bubbles, and small open-economy features. They find that, given the distribution of shocks and inflation persistence over the past 25 years, the optimal target horizon for Canada tends to be at the lower […] -
Oil Price Movements and the Global Economy: A Model-Based Assessment
We develop a five-region version (Canada, an oil exporter, the United States, emerging Asia and Japan plus the euro area) of the Global Economy Model (GEM) encompassing production and trade of crude oil, and use it to study the international transmission mechanism of shocks that drive oil prices. -
Computing Optimal Policy in a Timeless-Perspective: An Application to a Small-Open Economy
Since the contribution of Kydland and Prescott (1977), it is well known that the optimal Ramsey policy is time inconsistent. In a series of recent contributions, Woodford (2003) proposes a new methodology to circumvent this problem, namely the timeless perspective solution. -
Optimization in a Simulation Setting: Use of Function Approximation in Debt Strategy Analysis
The stochastic simulation model suggested by Bolder (2003) for the analysis of the federal government's debt-management strategy provides a wide variety of useful information. It does not, however, assist in determining an optimal debt-management strategy for the government in its current form. -
Time-Consistent Control in Non-Linear Models
We show how to use optimal control theory to derive optimal time-consistent Markov-perfect government policies in nonlinear dynamic general equilibrium models, extending the result of Cohen and Michel (1988) for models with quadratic objective functions and linear dynamics. We replace private agents' costates by flexible functions of current states in the government's maximization problem. -
The Institutional and Political Determinants of Fiscal Adjustment
The author empirically assesses the effects of institutional and political factors on the need and willingness of governments to make large fiscal adjustments. -
The 1975–78 Anti-Inflation Program in Retrospect
The author provides an overview of the 1975–78 Anti-Inflation Program (AIP), in a background document prepared for a seminar organized by the Bank of Canada to mark the AIP's 30th anniversary. -
The Transmission of World Shocks to Emerging-Market Countries: An Empirical Analysis
The first step in designing effective policies to stabilize an economy is to understand business cycles. No country is isolated from the world economy and external shocks are becoming increasingly important. -
Characterization of the Dynamic Effects of Fiscal Shocks in a Small Open Economy
The author studies the macroeconomic consequences of discretionary changes in the fiscal policy instruments for Canada.