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The third strategy employed by the Bank when dealing with uncertainty is the consideration of appropriate simple reaction functions or "rules" for the setting of the policy interest rate. Since John Taylor's presentation of his much-discussed rule, research on simple policy rules has exploded. Simple rules have several advantages. In particular, they are easy to construct and communicate and are believed by some to be robust, in the sense of generating good results in a variety of economic models. This article provides an overview of the recent research regarding the usefulness and robustness of simple monetary policy rules, particularly in models of the Canadian economy. It also describes and explains the role of simple rules in the conduct of monetary policy in Canada.

The results of our 2017 Bitcoin Omnibus Survey (December 12 to 15, 2017) when compared with those from 2016 show that Bitcoin “awareness” increased from 64 to 85 per cent, while ownership increased from 2.9 to 5.0 per cent. Most Bitcoin purchasers are using the cryptocurrency as an investment and not as a means of payment for goods or services.

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Chargex

The artefacts on the cover are part of the National Currency Collection of the Bank of Canada.

Photography by Gord Carter

This article describes the Bank of Canada’s version of the Global Economy Model structured to incorporate an active banking system that features an interbank market and cross-border lending. After describing the new model, the authors use it to examine the responses of selected U.S. and Canadian macroeconomic variables to a “credit crunch” in the United States and also to study the impact of changes in the regulatory limits to bank leverage in Canada. They also discuss the relative merits of a monetary policy framework based on inflation targeting and one based on price-level targeting in the presence of shocks to the U.S. and Canadian banking sectors.

Our paper employs smartphone data to construct an improved cash access metric by accounting for both spatial agglomeration and households’ travel patterns. We find that incorporating trip-chaining into the travel metric could show that travel costs are from 15 to 25% less than not incorporating trip-chaining and that the biggest decrease is driven by rural residents.

The Bank of Canada’s annual economic conference, held in October 2012, brought together experts from across Canada and around the world to discuss key issues concerning financial intermediation and vulnerabilities. The conference covered such topics as household finances and their relationship to financial stability, as well as bank regulation, securitization and shadow banking.

We develop high-frequency, news-based indicators using natural language processing methods to analyze news media texts. Our indicators track both supply (raw, intermediate and final goods) and labour shortages over time. They also provide weekly time-varying topic narratives about various types of shortages.

This issue features a summary of the Bank’s annual conference, which took place in November 2011 and dealt with payments systems, and two articles that present research by Bank staff on global current account imbalances and macrofinancial risk assessment. The fourth article in this issue reviews the recent experience with inflation targeting.