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This article examines recent research on the influence of various forms of economic uncertainty on the performance of different classes of monetary policy rules: from simple rules to fully optimal monetary policy under commitment. The authors explain why uncertainty matters in the design of monetary policy rules and provide quantitative examples from the recent literature. They also present results for several policy rules in ToTEM, the Bank of Canada's main model for projection and analysis, including rules that respond to price level, rather than to inflation.

This paper examines the role of monetary policy in an environment with aggregate risk and incomplete markets. In a two-period overlapping-generations model with aggregate uncertainty and nominal bonds, optimal monetary policy attains the ex-ante Pareto optimal allocation.

Diffusion functions in term-structure models are measures of uncertainty about future price movements and are directly related to the risk associated with holding financial securities. Correct specification of diffusion functions is crucial in pricing options and other derivative securities. In contrast to the standard parametric two-factor models, we propose a non-parametric two-factor term-structure model that […]

Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn A. Wilkins discusses technological progress and how policy-makers can harness it for economic growth that benefits everyone.

While demographic change has been an ongoing process in Canada, labour market implications of an aging population will become more acute in coming years. This article discusses the anticipated slowing in the growth of trend labour input over the coming decades with the aging of the baby boomers, declining fertility rates, and the stabilization of the labour force attachment of women. As the pool of labour shrinks, employers and governments will be looking for ways to address barriers to continued labour force participation and firms will have a greater incentive to find ways of improving labour productivity.

The authors examine the effect of a trade-off between shared credit risk and liquidity efficiency, among participants in Tranche 2 of the Large Value Transfer System (LVTS T2), on their decisions to leave open, or close, their bilateral credit limits (BCLs) to a participant at risk of imminent closure.

The Reports section of the Financial System Review examines selected issues of relevance to the Canadian and global financial systems. The June 2015 issue features two reports summarizing recent work by Bank of Canada staff on specific financial sector policies.

Monetary policy in the presence of nominal debt and labour supply heterogeneity creates a policy trade-off: a short-term economic stimulus leads to persistently reduced output over the medium term. Price-level targeting weakens this trade-off and is better able to stabilize inflation and output than inflation targeting.

Studies such as Lemmon, Roberts and Zender (2008) demonstrate how stable firms’ capital structures are over time, and raise the question of whether new theories of capital structure are needed to explain these phenomena.

A consumer discloses information to a multi-product seller, which learns about the consumer’s preferences, sets prices, and makes product recommendations. While the consumer benefits from accurate product recommendations, the seller may use the information to price discriminate.