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Monetary aggregates



  • August 14, 1999

    Passive Money, Active Money, and Monetary Policy

    Bank of Canada Review - Summer 1999 David Laidler
    This article by the Bank's visiting economist examines the role of money in the transmission of monetary policy. Professor Laidler argues against the view of money as a passive variable that reacts to changes in prices, output, and interest rates but has no direct causative effect on them. He maintains that the empirical evidence supports the view of money playing an active role in the transmission mechanism. While he agrees that individual monetary aggregates can be difficult to read because of instabilities in the demand-for-money function, he argues that monetary aggregates, particularly those relating to transactions money, should have a more significant place in the hierarchy of policy variables that the Bank considers when formulating monetary policy.
    Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Monetary aggregates, Monetary policy transmission
  • May 15, 1999

    Recent developments in the monetary aggregates and their implications

    Bank of Canada Review - Spring 1999 Joseph Atta-Mensah, Loretta Nott
    In its conduct of monetary policy, the Bank of Canada carefully monitors the pace of monetary expansion for indications about the outlook for inflation and economic activity. In recent years, a number of factors have distorted the growth of the traditional broad and narrow aggregates. In this article, the authors discuss the uncertainty surrounding the classification of deposit instruments that has resulted from the elimination of reserve requirements and from other financial innovations. They introduce two new measures of transactions balances, M1+ and M1++ (described more fully in a technical note in this issue of the Review), that internalize some of the substitutions that have occurred. They attribute the deceleration in M1 growth in 1998 partly to the declining influence of special factors, partly to a lagged response to interest rate increases in 1997 and early 1998, and partly to some temporary tightening in credit conditions in the autumn of 1998. The broad monetary aggregate M2++, which includes all personal savings deposits, life insurance annuities, and mutual funds, grew at a steady pace in 1998, presaging growth of about 4 to 5 per cent in total dollar spending and inflation inside the target range.
    Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Monetary aggregates

  • The Quantity of Money and Monetary Policy

    Staff Working Paper 1999-5 David Laidler
    The relationships among the quantity theory of money, monetarism and policy regimes based on money-growth and inflation targeting are briefly discussed as a prelude to an exposition of alternative views of money's role in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. The passive-money view treats the money supply as an endogenous variable that plays no role […]
    Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary aggregates, Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E5, E51, E52
  • May 14, 1998

    Recent developments in the monetary aggregates and their implications

    Bank of Canada Review - Spring 1998
    This article examines the developments in the monetary aggregates over the course of 1997 and their implications for future economic activity. The narrow aggregate, M1, grew rapidly in the first half of 1997 but slowed somewhat during the second half of the year. Much of the strong growth in this aggregate over the last several years has been associated with a higher demand for transactions balances as interest rates declined and economic activity revived. There were some special factors at play, however, that are discussed in the article. The Bank expects some slowing in M1 growth through 1998 and into 1999. This would be consistent with a trend of inflation within the inflation-control target range of 1 to 3 per cent over the next couple of years. Growth in the broad aggregate, M2+, continued to be distorted by the shift of savings out of fixed-term deposits into mutual funds. A broader aggregate that includes M2+, CSBs, and all mutual funds and thus provides a better estimate of broad money growth, grew at a moderate pace during 1997. The recent behaviour of the broad monetary aggregates continues to suggest that inflation will remain low in coming years.
    Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Monetary aggregates

  • Forecasting Inflation with the M1-VECM: Part Two

    Staff Working Paper 1998-6 Walter Engert, Scott Hendry
    A central bank's main concern is the general direction of future inflation, and not transitory fluctuations of the inflation rate. As a result, this paper is concerned with forecasting a simple measure of the trend of inflation, the eight-quarter CPI-inflation rate. The primary objective is to improve the M1-based vector-error-correction model (VECM) developed by Hendry […]
    Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Inflation and prices, Monetary aggregates JEL Code(s): C, C3, C5, E, E3, E4, E5
  • May 11, 1996

    Recent developments in monetary aggregates and their implications

    Bank of Canada Review - Spring 1996 Louis-Robert Lafleur, Walter Engert
    In 1995, the broad aggregate M2+ grew at an annual rate of 4.5 per cent—almost twice the rate recorded in 1994—as competition from mutual funds drew less money from personal savings deposits. An adjusted M2+ aggregate, which internalizes the effect of close substitutes such as CSBs and certain mutual funds, grew by only 3.4 per cent. Gross M1 grew by 8.2 per cent during the year, reflecting an increased demand for transactions balances as market interest rates declined and as banks offered more attractive rates of interest on corporate current account balances. The robust growth of gross M1 in the second half of 1995 suggests a moderate expansion of economic activity in the first half of 1996, while moderate growth in the broad aggregates indicates a rate of monetary expansion consistent with continued low inflation. In this annual review of the monetary aggregates, the authors also introduce a new model, based on calculated deviations of M1 from its long-run demand, which suggests that inflation should remain just below the midpoint of the inflation-control target range over the next couple of years.
    Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Monetary aggregates, Recent economic and financial developments

  • A Distant-Early-Warning Model of Inflation Based on M1 Disequilibria

    Staff Working Paper 1996-5 Joseph Atta-Mensah, Walter Engert, Scott Hendry, Jamie Armour
    A vector error-correction model (VECM) that forecasts inflation between the current quarter and eight quarters ahead is found to provide significant leading information about inflation. The model focusses on the effects of deviations of M1 from its long-run demand but also includes, among other things, the influence of the exchange rate, a simple measure of the output gap and past prices.
    Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Monetary aggregates, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E37, E5, E52

  • Long-Run Demand for M1

    Staff Working Paper 1995-11 Scott Hendry
    The goal of this paper is to investigate and estimate long-run relationships among M1, prices, output and interest rates, with a view to determining if there is a stable relationship that can be interpreted as long-run money demand. The paper uses a maximum-likelihood multiple-equation cointegration technique, developed by Johansen, to fit a system of equations […]
    Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Monetary aggregates

  • The Canadian Experience with Weighted Monetary Aggregates

    Staff Working Paper 1995-10 David Longworth, Joseph Atta-Mensah
    This paper compares the empirical performance of Canadian weighted monetary aggregates (in particular, Fisher ideal aggregates) with the current summation aggregates, for their information content and forecasting performance in terms of prices, real output and nominal spending for the period 1971Q1 to 1989Q3. The properties of money-demand equations for these aggregates, particularly their temporal stability, […]
    Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary aggregates
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