The Effects of Budget Rules on Fiscal Performance and Macroeconomic Stabilization Staff Working Paper 1997-15 Jonathan Millar Budget rules can be defined as legislated or constitutional constraints on government deficits, taxes, expenditures, or debt. This paper reviews the budget rules recently legislated in six of Canada's provinces and both of its territories, as well as budget rules in other OECD countries. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy JEL Code(s): E, E6, E62, H, H3, H6, H61
Menu Costs, Relative Prices, and Inflation: Evidence for Canada Staff Working Paper 1997-14 Robert Amano, Tiff Macklem The menu-cost models of price adjustment developed by Ball and Mankiw (1994;1995) predict that short-run movements in inflation should be positively related to the skewness and the variance of the distribution of disaggregated relative-price shocks in each period. We test these predictions on Canadian data using the distribution of changes in disaggregated producer prices to measure the skewness and standard deviation of relative-price shocks. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, E, E3, E31
What Does Downward Nominal-Wage Rigidity Imply for Monetary Policy? Staff Working Paper 1997-13 Seamus Hogan A recent paper has suggested there might be a trade-off between inflation and unemployment at low inflation rates and this has led some economists to recommend that Canada increase its inflation rate. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation targets, Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, E, E2, E24, E5, E50
May 30, 1997 Flexible Exchange Rates in a World of Low Inflation Remarks Gordon Thiessen FOREX '97 Conference Toronto, Ontario There is a good deal of discussion these days about Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in Europe - about the benefits and difficulties of organizing such a union. However, today I would like to examine a somewhat different issue, one that is at the other end of the spectrum; namely, How is the international system of flexible exchange rates working these days? Content Type(s): Press, Speeches and appearances, Remarks
May 20, 1997 Monetary Policy Report – May 1997 Since the last Report, the Canadian economy has advanced broadly in line with expectations. Content Type(s): Publications, Monetary Policy Report
May 14, 1997 The changing business activities of banks in Canada Bank of Canada Review - Spring 1997 Jim Armstrong Over the last 30 years, the business mix of banks in Canada has changed significantly. Progress in information-processing technology, legislative changes, and market forces have combined to blur the traditional distinctions between banks and other financial institutions and have allowed banks to offer a much wider range of products and services. In this article, the author reviews the expansion of bank lending to households over this period and their recent movement into personal wealth management. While these trends were facilitated by revisions to legislation, they also reflected the changing needs of the "baby boom" generation, first as home-buyers and, more recently, as middle-aged investors. On the commercial and corporate side, banks reacted to the rapid expansion of securities markets (and to the reduced demand for intermediation by both lenders/depositors and borrowers) by moving into investment banking, after legislative changes opened this business to them in the late 1980s. They also used their expertise in credit assessment and risk management to provide credit guarantees and to act as counterparties and intermediaries in derivatives markets. Notable in this broadening of bank activities has been their more recent entry into the trust, mutual fund, and retail brokerage business. The banks have also made preliminary forays into insurance. The expansion of off-balance-sheet activities has made fee income an increasingly important part of bank earnings. The article also looks at the emerging tools and techniques that will most likely transform the structure of banking in the future. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Financial institutions
May 14, 1997 Bank of Canada Review - Spring 1997 Cover page Japanese oban Photography by James Zagon. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review
May 13, 1997 Capacity constraints, price adjustment, and monetary policy Bank of Canada Review - Spring 1997 Tiff Macklem The short-run Phillips curve describes a positive short-run relationship between the level of economic activity and inflation. When the level of demand in the economy as a whole runs ahead of the level of output that the economy can supply in the short run, price pressures increase and inflation rises. This article reviews the origins of the short-run Phillips curve with particular emphasis on the long-standing idea that the shape of this curve may be non-linear, with inflation becoming more sensitive to changes in output when the cycle of economic activity is high than when it is low. This type of non-linearity in the short-run Phillips curve, which is typically motivated by the effects of capacity constraints that limit the ability of the economy to expand in the short run, has recently attracted renewed attention. The article surveys recent research that finds some evidence of this type of non-linearity in the Phillips curve in Canada and considers the potential implications for monetary policy. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Monetary policy transmission, Potential output
A Micro Approach to the Issue of Hysteresis in Unemployment: Evidence from the 19881990 Labour Market Activity Survey Staff Working Paper 1997-12 Gordon Wilkinson This paper uses a rich set of microeconomic labour market data—the 198890 Labour Market Activity Survey published by Statistics Canada—to test whether there is negative duration dependence in unemployment spells. It updates and extends similar work carried out by Jones (1995) who used the 198687 Labour Market Activity Survey. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24
A Band-Aid Solution to Inflation Targeting Staff Working Paper 1997-11 Robert Amano, Richard Black, Marcel Kasumovich This paper reviews selectively the literature on exchange rate target zones and corresponding methodologies and examines whether they can be used to analyse the inflation-control problem. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation targets JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, E50