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9368 Results

August 22, 2003

Measuring Interest Rate Expectations in Canada

Financial market expectations regarding future changes in the target for the overnight rate of interest are an important source of information for the Bank of Canada. Financial markets are the mechanism through which the policy rate affects other financial variables, such as longer-term interest rates, the exchange rate, and other asset prices. An accurate measure of their expectations can therefore help policy-makers assess the potential impact of contemplated changes. Johnson focuses on the expectations hypothesis, which measures expectations of future levels of the target overnight rate as implied by current money market yields. Although expectations can be derived from the current yield on any short-term fixed-income asset, some assets have proven to be more accurate predictors than others. The implementation of a policy of fixed-announcements dates has coincided with the increased predictive power of these short-term assets. As a result of this improvement, a relatively simple model of the yield curve can now provide an accurate measure of financial market expectations.
December 23, 2006

Global Savings, Investment, and World Real Interest Rates

Over the past 25 years, world long-term interest rates have declined to levels not seen since the 1960s. This decline has been accompanied by falling world investment and savings rates. The authors explore global saving and investment outcomes that have led to the fall in the world real interest rate. The results show that the key factors explaining movements in savings and investment are variables that evolve relatively slowly over time, such as labour force growth and the age structure of the world economy. The conclusions suggest that, over the coming years, it is unlikely that these slowly changing variables will be a source of significant changes in world real interest rates.
May 20, 2003

Updating the Bank of Canada Commodity Price Index

The Bank of Canada Commodity Price Index (BCPI) summarizes the price movements of 23 commodities produced in Canada. Information provided by the BCPI is used in analyzing movements in GDP, industrial producer prices, inflation, and the exchange rate. Effective 15 May 2003, a number of changes will be reflected in the BCPI. To ensure that the index accurately reflects the natural resource sectors of the economy, a number of new components and pricing sources have been incorporated into the BCPI. Weights in the new index will be chained to 1 January 1991 and 1 January 2000 to better reflect contemporary values.
October 20, 2006

MUSE: The Bank of Canada's New Projection Model of the U.S. Economy

Staff projections provided for the Bank of Canada's monetary policy decision process take into account the integration of Canada's very open economy within the global economy, as well as its close real and financial linkages with the United States. To provide inputs for this projection, the Bank has developed several models, including MUSE, NEUQ (the New European Quarterly Model), and BoC-GEM (Bank of Canada Global Economy Model), to analyze and forecast economic developments in the rest of the world. The authors focus on MUSE, the model currently used to describe interaction among the principal U.S. economic variables, including gross domestic product, inflation, interest rates, and the exchange rate. Brief descriptions are also provided of NEUQ and BoC-GEM.
August 19, 2010

Price-Level Targeting and Relative-Price Shocks

Stephen Murchison reviews the findings of recent Bank of Canada research on the relative merits of inflation targeting and price-level targeting (PLT) for a small open economy, such as Canada's, that is susceptible to large and persistent terms-of-trade shocks.
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