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Governor Mark Carney discusses globalization, financial stability and employment.

During the 1990s the Bank of Canada made several changes that transformed its conduct of monetary policy. In the 1960s and 1970s, policy decisions were made in an environment characterized by instrument opaqueness and goal opaqueness, which tended to shield the Bank's operations from scrutiny and accountability. Since the 1970s the Bank has moved towards transparency and openness by rejecting multiple policy instruments and adopting a single, well-defined goal of inflation control. A recent survey has shown that the Bank of Canada is in the middle range of central banks with regard to its transparency and has lost points for not publishing the forecasts that shape its policy or the minutes and voting records of its governing body. Chant suggests that the public has benefited significantly from the changes the Bank has made, but that it should continue to support research on the benefits of low and stable inflation and continually inform other policy-makers and the public of the results.

The spread between long-term and short-term interest rates has proven to be an excellent predictor of changes of economic activity in Canada. As a general rule, when long-term interest rates have been much above short-term rates, strong increases in output have followed within about a year; however, whenever the yield curve has been inverted for any extended period of time, a recession has followed. Similar findings exist for other countries, including the United States. But although Canadian and U.S. interest rates generally move quite closely together, the Canadian yield curve has been distinctly better at predicting future Canadian output. The explanation given for this result is that the term spread has reflected both current monetary conditions, which affect short-term interest rates, and expected real returns on investment and expectations of inflation, which are the main determinants of long-term rates. This article is mainly a summary of econometric work done at the Bank. It also touches on some of the extensive recent literature in this area.

We analyze the transmission of monetary policy during different phases of a sectoral demand reallocation episode when there are frictions to increasing production in a sector. Monetary policy is more effective in reducing inflation when a larger proportion of sectors are expanding or expect to expand in the near future.

We investigate the effect of inflation on output and welfare in the laboratory. Consistent with monetary theory, we find that inflation acts as a tax on monetary exchange and reduces output and welfare.

Every quarter, the Bank of Canada conducts quarterly consultations with businesses across Canada, referred to as the Business Outlook Survey (BOS). A principal-component analysis conducted by Pichette and Rennison (2011) led to the development of the BOS indicator, which summarizes survey results and is used by the Bank as a gauge of overall business sentiment.

We study food inflation rates for Canadian households during periods of low and high inflation from 2012Q4 to 2023Q4. Households experienced more varied inflation rates during the recent high inflation. Cumulative food inflation has been 2.2 percentage points higher for lower-income households than for highest-income households since the inflation surge.

Given technological advances and the widespread use of the Internet, various digital currencies have emerged. In most cases, Internet platforms such as Facebook and Amazon restrict the functionality of their digital currencies to enhance the business model and maximize their profits. While platform-based digital currencies could increase the efficiency of retail payments, they could also raise some important policy issues if they were to become widely used outside of the platform. Thus, it is important to closely monitor the evolution of these digital currencies.

We provide a primer on the role of debt modelling in informing the sovereign debt issuance strategy and discuss how specific challenges faced by debt managers can influence model design decisions. These insights are supported by our experiences using the Canadian Debt Strategy Model to guide policy decisions.

We construct an index that systematically measures and tracks the stringency of government policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across Canadian provinces. Researchers can use this stringency index to analyze how the pandemic is affecting the economy.