December 21, 2002
Staff research, Publications
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December 20, 2002
Transparency and the Response of Interest Rates to the Publication of Macroeconomic Data
The benefits of transparency—the outcome of the measures taken by the central bank to allow financial markets and economic agents to understand the factors it takes into account in formulating monetary policy—are now widely recognized. These benefits include smoother implementation of monetary policy and increased effectiveness as markets improve their ability to anticipate the Bank's policy decisions and account for them in their operations. How interest rates respond to the publication of macroeconomic data depends on the degree of transparency in monetary policy, as the rates will rise or fall as a reflection of the market's revised expectations. Before the Bank of Canada adopted initiatives to improve transparency, such as the inflation-control targets, the semi-annual publication of the Monetary Policy Report and Updates, and the fixed announcement dates, changes to the overnight rate created some volatility in interest rates, and publishing Canadian macroeconomic data did not appear to have a major impact on rates. This article shows how the Bank of Canada's steps towards greater transparency have increased the impact of Canadian data on short-term interest rates and have improved financial markets' understanding of how monetary policy decisions are taken. -
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Salaire réel, chocs technologiques et fluctuations économiques
The author presents empirical evidence that he has obtained from an analysis of the response of different economic variables, including the real wage rate, to a technology shock. -
Estimating Settlement Risk and the Potential for Contagion in Canada's Automated Clearing Settlement System
Payments systems operate virtually unnoticed in our daily lives and yet are crucial to a wellfunctioning economy and financial system. -
Inflation Changes, Yield Spreads, and Threshold Effects
Using interest rate yield spreads to explain changes in inflation, we investigate whether such relationships can be modelled using two-regime threshold models. -
An Empirical Analysis of Dynamic Interrelationships Among Inflation, Inflation Uncertainty, Relative Price Dispersion, and Output Growth
Within a unified framework, the author conducts an empirical investigation of dynamic interrelationships among inflation, inflation uncertainty, relative price dispersion, and output growth. -
Oil-Price Shocks and Retail Energy Prices in Canada
The effects of global energy-price shocks on retail energy prices in Canada are examined. More specifically, the author looks at the response of the consumer price indexes for gasoline, heating oil, natural gas, and electricity in Canada to movements in world crude oil prices. -
The Performance and Robustness of Simple Monetary Policy Rules in Models of the Canadian Economy
In this report, we evaluate several simple monetary policy rules in twelve private and public sector models of the Canadian economy. Our results indicate that none of the simple policy rules we examined is robust to model uncertainty, in that no single rule performs well in all models. -
November 21, 2002
Is Canada Dollarized?
The sharp depreciation of the Canadian dollar and the successful launch of the euro have sparked a lively debate in Canada about the possible benefits of formally adopting the U.S. dollar as our national currency. Some observers have suggested that this debate is largely irrelevant, since Canada is already highly "dollarized." Canadian businesses and households, they assert, often use the U.S. dollar to perform standard money functions in preference to their own currency. Very little evidence has been provided, however, to support these claims. The authors review the available data with a view to drawing some tentative conclusions about the extent to which Canada has already been informally dollarized. The evidence suggests that many of the concerns that have been expressed about the imminent demise of the Canadian dollar have been misplaced. The Canadian dollar continues to be used as the principal unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value within our borders. Moreover, there is no indication that dollarization is likely to take hold in the foreseeable future. Indeed, in many respects, the Canadian economy is less dollarized now than it was 20 years ago.