December 8, 2003 Past Adjustments and Future Trends in the Canadian Economy Remarks David Dodge London Chamber of Commerce London, Ontario When giving a speech near the end of a year, it is common practice to look back over the past 12 months, consider what we have learned from the events and experiences of the year, and think a bit about what might lie ahead. I became Governor of the Bank of Canada in 2001 and, since that time, I have found myself saying at the end of each year, "Well, we won't see another year like that again." Content Type(s): Press, Speeches and appearances, Remarks
December 8, 2003 Governor Reviews Past Adjustments and Future Trends in the Canadian Economy Media Relations London, Ontario Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge today reviewed the economic adjustments that Canadians made through the 1990s and talked about the adjustments that will be necessary in coming decades. Content Type(s): Press, Press releases
Why Does Private Consumption Rise After a Government Spending Shock? Staff Working Paper 2003-43 Hafedh Bouakez, Nooman Rebei Recent empirical evidence suggests that private consumption is crowded-in by government spending. This outcome violates existing macroeconomic theory, according to which the negative wealth effect brought about by a rise in public expenditure should decrease consumption. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Fiscal policy JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E6, E62
A Structural VAR Approach to the Intertemporal Model of the Current Account Staff Working Paper 2003-42 Takashi Kano The intertemporal current account approach predicts that the current account of a small open economy is independent of global shocks, and that responses of the current account to country-specific shocks depend on the persistence of the shocks. The author shows that these predictions impose cross-equation restrictions (CERS) on a structural vector autoregression (SVAR). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Balance of payments and components, Monetary aggregates JEL Code(s): F, F3, F32, F4, F41
Anatomy of a Twin Crisis Staff Working Paper 2003-41 Raphael Solomon The author presents a model of a twin crisis, in which foreign and domestic residents play a banking game. Both "honest" and run equilibria of the post-deposit subgame exist; some run equilibria lead to a currency crisis, as agents convert domestic currency to foreign currency. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Financial institutions JEL Code(s): E, E5, E58, F, F3, F30, G, G2, G21
Poignée de main invisible et persistance des cycles économiques : une revue de la littérature Staff Working Paper 2003-40 Christian Calmès The author explains how self-enforcing labour contracts can enhance the performance of macroeconomic models. He exposes the benefits of using these dynamic contracts to account for some puzzling macroeconomic facts regarding the dynamics and persistence of employment, consumption and output. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E1, E12, E4, E49, J, J3, J30, J31, J4, J41
Alternative Targeting Regimes, Transmission Lags, and the Exchange Rate Channel Staff Working Paper 2003-39 Jean-Paul Lam Using a closed-economy model, Jensen (2002) and Walsh (2003) have, respectively, shown that a policy regime that optimally targets nominal income growth (NIT) or the change in the output gap (SLT) outperforms a regime that targets inflation, because NIT and SLT induce more inertia in the actions of the central bank, effectively replicating the outcome obtained under precommitment. The author obtains a very different result when the analysis is extended to open-economy models. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E58
Simple Monetary Policy Rules in an Open-Economy, Limited-Participation Model Staff Working Paper 2003-38 Scott Hendry, Wai-Ming Ho, Kevin Moran The authors assess the stabilization properties of simple monetary policy rules within the context of a small open-economy model constructed around the limited-participation assumption and calibrated to salient features of the Canadian economy. By relying on limited participation as the main nominal friction that affects the artificial economy, the authors provide an important check of the robustness of the results obtained using alternative environments in the literature on monetary policy rules, most notably the now-standard "New Keynesian" paradigm that emphasizes rigidities in the price-setting mechanism. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, E5, E52, E58, F, F3, F31
December 2, 2003 Bank of Canada keeps target for the overnight rate at 2 3/4 per cent Media Relations Ottawa, Ontario The Bank of Canada today announced that it is maintaining its target for the overnight rate at 2 3/4 per cent. Content Type(s): Press, Press releases
Financial Constraints and Investment: Assessing the Impact of a World Bank Loan Program on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Sri Lanka Staff Working Paper 2003-37 Varouj Aivazian, Dipak Mazumdar, Eric Santor The authors examine the investment behaviour of a sample of small, credit-constrained firms in Sri Lanka. Using a unique panel-data set, they analyze and compare the activities of two groups of small firms distinguished by their different access to financing; one group consists of firms with heavily subsidized loans from the World Bank, and the other consists of firms without such subsidies. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Development economics JEL Code(s): G, G0, G00, O, O1, O16