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How do firms adjust prices in the marketplace? Do they tend to adjust prices infrequently in response to changes in market conditions? If so, why? These remain key questions in macroeconomics, particularly for central banks that work to keep inflation low and stable.

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.

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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 studies the interdependence between fiscal and monetary policy in a DSGE model with sticky prices and non-zero trend inflation. We characterize the fiscal and monetary policies by a rule whereby a given fraction k of the government debt must be backed by the discounted value of current and future primary surpluses.

In this paper two shocks are analysed using Canadian data: a money-supply shock ("M-shock") and an interest-rate shock ("R-shock"). Money-supply shocks are derived using long-run restrictions based on long-run propositions of monetary theory. Thus, an M-shock is represented by an orthogonalized innovation in the trend shared by money and prices.

The conduct of monetary policy within an inflation-targeting framework requires the establishment of an inflation-target horizon, which is the average time it takes inflation to return to the target. Policy-makers have an interest in communicating this horizon, since it is likely to help anchor inflation expectations. This article focuses on the determination of the appropriate policy horizon by reporting on two recent Bank of Canada studies. The evidence suggests that the current target horizon of six to eight quarters remains appropriate. It is important to note that the duration of the optimal inflation-target horizon varies widely, depending on the combination of shocks to the economy. In rare cases when the financial accelerator is triggered by a persistent shock, such as an asset-price bubble, it may be appropriate to take a longer view of the inflation-target horizon.

A distinguishing feature of macro stress testing exercises is the use of macroeconomic models in scenario design and implementation. It is widely agreed that scenarios should be based on "rare but plausible" events that have either resulted in vulnerabilities in the past or could do so in the future.

The first step in designing effective policies to stabilize an economy is to understand business cycles. No country is isolated from the world economy and external shocks are becoming increasingly important.

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.