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Leonard C. Wyon: Canada’s Victorian Engraver

Photography by Gord Carter

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.

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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

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.

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.

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Bus Transportation Tokens and Tickets

The pieces illustrated on the cover range in size from 12 mm to 38 mm in diameter or width. They form part of the National Currency Collection, Bank of Canada.

Photography by Gord Carter, Ottawa

This paper examines the relationship between volatility shocks and preference shocks in an analytically tractable endogenous growth model with recursive preferences and stochastic volatility. I show that there exists an explicit mapping between volatility shocks and preference shocks, and a rise in volatility generates the same impulse responses of macroeconomic aggregates as a negative preference shock.

This issue focuses on the upcoming renewal of Canada’s inflation-control target. Bank researchers discuss the estimate of the lower bound to policy interest rates in Canada. They also discuss downward nominal wage rigidity and whether its presence warrants considering a higher inflation target. The third article highlights the experience some international central banks have had with unconventional monetary policies. The final article describes monetary policy frameworks in 10 advanced economies.