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Inflation targeting (IT) had originally been introduced as a device to bring inflation down and stabilize it at low levels. Given the current environment of persistently weak inflation in many advanced economies, IT central banks must now bring inflation up to target.

This paper uses a small-open economy model for the Canadian economy to examine the optimal Taylor-type monetary policy rule that stabilizes output and inflation in an environment where endogenous boom-bust cycles in house prices can occur.

Inflation-targeting frameworks have remained relatively stable over the past few years despite significant challenges, including prolonged low inflation, a large negative commodity price shock and rising financial stability concerns in some economies. The tools used by central banks have, however, evolved substantially. This article provides a survey of the developments in the inflation-targeting frameworks of 10 central banks in advanced economies that correspond to the three research areas of the Bank of Canada’s 2016 renewal: the level of the inflation target, the measurement of core inflation and financial stability considerations in the formulation of monetary policy.

This paper reconsiders several recently published but controversial results about the behaviour of exchange rates. In particular, it explores finite-sample problems in the application of cointegration tests and shows how these may have affected the conclusions of recent research.

The number of job gains and losses across firms in Canada each year is roughly one-fifth the total number of jobs and generally occurs within sectors (industries) rather than across sectors. Since labour reallocation within sectors has been strongly related to productivity growth in Canada, defining the key drivers of this type of reallocation is important, given the higher rates of reallocation and productivity growth in the Untied States than in Canada. This article finds that the appreciation of the Canadian dollar and rising commodity prices led to above-average reallocation of labour across sectors over the 2005-08 period, but that the impact on productivity has been minor. Labour reallocation across firms, however, generates substantial labour productivity gains in manufacturing and the business sector as a whole.

We explore the long-run effects of a monetary policy shock in a Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian model built on the micro evidence that job losses lead to persistently lower individual earnings through a combination of skill decay and abandonment of the labour force.

This paper examines asset allocation strategies in an extreme value at risk (VaR) framework in which the risk measure is the p-quantile from the extreme value distribution. The main focus is on the allocation problem faced by an extremely risk-averse institution, such as a central bank.

This paper analyses the Canadian economy for the post 1960 period. It uses an accounting procedure developed in Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan (2006). The procedure identifies accounting factors that help align the predictions of the neoclassical growth model with macroeconomic variables observed in the data.

We examine the ability of the simple linear-quadratic model under rational expectations to explain dynamic behaviour of aggregate Canadian imports. In contrast to authors of previous studies who examine dynamic behaviour using the LQ model, we estimate the structural parameters using the Euler equation in a limited information framework that does not require an explicit solution for the model's control variables in terms of the exogenous forcing variables.

The paper analyzes the integration of euro area sovereign bond markets during the European sovereign debt crisis. It tests for contagion (i.e., an intensification in the transmission of shocks across countries), fragmentation (a reduction in spillovers) and flight-to-quality patterns, exploiting the heteroskedasticity of intraday changes in bond yields for identification.