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We compare the Federal Reserve’s asset purchase programs with those implemented by the Bank of England and the Swedish Riksbank, and the Swiss National Bank’s reserve expansion program.

The last few weeks have been a time of turbulence in financial markets. In times such as these, it is common for people to focus on day-by-day or even hour-by-hour events, and to lose sight of the future. But tonight, I want to focus on the future; specifically, the future of inflation targeting in Canada.

Shocks to a currency area can and often do have asymmetric impacts on its regions that, in the absence of perfect labour mobility, lead to gaps in relative labour market performance. Witness, for example, the effects of the 2008/09 recession and subsequent financial crisis in Europe on the dispersion of employment rates across the euro area – and to a lesser extent the United States.

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.

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The "pretended" Bank of Upper Canada — Kingston (1819-22)

The note is part of the National Currency Collection of the Bank of Canada.
Photography by Gord Carter

The primary focus of this paper is to study conflict of interest in the brokerage market. Brokers face a conflict of interest when the commissions they receive from investors differ from the costs imposed by different trading venues.

Various drivers of business investment can be used to explain the underwhelming performance of investment in advanced economies since the global financial crisis, particularly since 2014. The slow growth in aggregate demand cannot by itself explain the full extent of the recent weakness in investment, which appears to be linked primarily to the collapse of global commodity prices and a rise in economic uncertainty. Looking ahead, business investment growth is likely to remain slower than in the pre-crisis period, largely because of structural factors such as population aging.

Technical data relating to the 2001 target renewal.

Discussion of recent research into three ways that oil-futures prices can improve our understanding of current conditions and future prospects in the global market for crude oil; inflation expectations and the conduct of monetary policy: a review of recent evidence and experience; examination of the influence of various forms of economic uncertainty on the performance of different classes of monetary policy rules; how, when, and why such revisions to many important economic variables occur.