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We examine the extent to which vertical and horizontal market structure can together explain incomplete retail pass-through.

A highly credible monetary policy helps to reduce the degree of uncertainty that can surround the objectives of such policy. When the monetary policy pursued by the central bank is credible, the expectations of the public are focused on a target. If the public believes that the Bank will act to bring inflation back to the target, then its expectations will not react so strongly to fluctuating price trends. In turn, fluctuations in inflation, interest rates, output, and employment should be less pronounced than in the absence of such credibility. The adoption of inflation control as a monetary policy objective by some countries has led central banks to take steps to enhance the credibility of monetary policy. For the Bank of Canada, these include * the publication of our Monetary Policy Report each May and November, with formal updates each February and August * the initiation of communications activities across the country * the use of the overnight interest rate as a short-term operating target * the issuing of a press release each time the Bank changes its key rates To date, most of the studies on this topic have concluded that success in keeping inflation within a target range has helped to increase the credibility of Canadian monetary policy. These surveys suggest that expected inflation, which stood at about 5 per cent in 1990, declined to around 2 per cent by 1999 (Chart 1, page 15). Indeed, according to these surveys, for the entire period during which the Bank has had a target range for inflation, expected inflation rates have remained within that range. Inflation expectations have also reacted very little to changes in the total CPI, suggesting that the targets have helped to focus expectations on the target rate and have thus enhanced the credibility of monetary policy (Chart 2, page 16). One particular study shows that the life of collective wage agreements in Canada has been increasing and that the number of such agreements containing cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) clauses has steadily declined. The authors of this study suggest that this may reflect the greater credibility of Canadian monetary policy (Table 1, page 16). The proportion of mortgages with five-year terms is now higher than it was in the mid-1980s, and many financial institutions have been offering 7- to 10-year mortgages. This also suggests that inflation targets have gained credibility.

Deputy Governor Sharon Kozicki discusses the use of exceptional monetary policy tools during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the Bank’s commitment to transparency and accountability.

The governance challenges facing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are not simply limited to representation and voice, and the associated question of quota allocation.

This article reviews arguments in the literature for and against price-level targeting, focusing on its costs and benefits compared with inflation targeting. Benefits of price-level targeting include the effect on forward-looking inflation expectations; the ability to substitute for commitment by a central bank to its future policies; lessening forecast errors; better economic performance in response to real shocks because of lower wage indexation; and a reduction in the problem of the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates.

This paper develops a model of an economy where bank credit supports both productive investment and individual consumption smoothing in the face of idiosyncratic income risk. Bank credit is constrained by bank equity capital.

Zero-coupon interest rates are the fundamental building block of fixed-income mathematics, and as such have an extensive number of applications in both finance and economics.

Since the autumn of 1997, the Bank of Canada's regional offices (located in Halifax, Montréal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver) have conducted consultations with businesses across Canada on a quarterly basis. These consultations are now referred to as the Business Outlook Survey (BOS).

This paper develops a theoretical framework to infer the nature of fixed costs from the relationship between entry patterns in international markets and destination market size. If fixed costs are at the firm level, firms take advantage of an intrafirm spillover by expanding firm-level product range (scope).

Business investment has been lower than expected in Canada and abroad since the financial crisis of 2007–09. This corporate investment gap is mirrored in firms’ other financing decisions, as they have increased cash holdings and dividend payments and decreased issuance of debt and equity.