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Feedback rules are rules aimed at guiding policy-makers as they face the problem of keeping inflation close to a desired path without causing variability elsewhere in the economy. These rules link short-term interest rates, controlled by the central bank, to the rate of inflation and/or its deviation from a target rate. The authors describe the most popular types of feedback rules and review some simulation results.

This article by the Bank's Web master details the development of the Bank's Web site and highlights some of its special features. It includes a description of dataBANK, a custom-built interface to the Bank's economic databases that gives visitors access to 220 data series. It also provides a mini tour of monetary policy material "on site," as well as a taste of things to come. Above all, this article invites you to come and visit our site.

Can Bitcoin survive? Some say it will become vulnerable to attacks as the rewards for processing Bitcoin transactions continue to decline. The economics of fixed costs suggest the specialized hardware used to mine Bitcoin may be key to its survival.

We review the nascent but fast-growing literature on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), focusing on their potential impacts on private banks. We evaluate these impacts in three areas of traditional banking: payments, lending and liquidity and maturity transformation. We also take a broader look at CBDCs and highlight two promising directions for future research.

The five articles in this issue present research and analysis by Bank staff covering a variety of topics: the growth of Canadian-dollar-denominated assets in official foreign reserves; the emergence of platform-based digital currencies; methods of forecasting the real price of oil; measures of uncertainty in monetary policy; and the recent performance of the labour market in Canada and the United States.

Understanding the factors that determine the migration of labour between regions is crucial for assessing the economy’s response to macroeconomic shocks and identifying policies that will encourage an efficient reallocation of labour. By examining the determinants of migration within Canada from 1991 to 2006, this article provides evidence that regional differences in employment rates and household incomes tend to increase labour migration, and that provincial borders and language differences are barriers to migration.

This paper assesses the resilience of flexible inflation targeting in the presence of large and persistent supply shocks.

This article describes experimental economics, in general, and new developments in experimental macroeconomics, in particular. The approach has a clear niche in providing evidence on economic phenomena that cannot be observed directly or that are difficult to measure. Experimental work conducted by Bank of Canada economists has shed light on a number of issues important to monetary policy, such as the relative efficacy between price-level and inflation targeting, and the nature of inflation expectations formation.

This paper outlines and assesses the various channels through which digitalization can affect prices of goods and services.