Monetary aggregates

• May 9, 1995

  Interpreting recent changes in monetary aggregates

  Bank of Canada Review - Spring 1995 Kevin Clinton

  In 1994, broad monetary aggregates such as M2+ grew at an unusually slow rate, indicating a continuation of low inflation. Narrow money, M1, ballooned early in the year, partly for technical reasons. However, its overall deceleration for the year as a whole would be consistent with lower output growth in the first half of 1995 than was seen the year before. During the first half of 1994, there was a continued shift by investors from deposits into equity, bond and mortgage mutual funds. In the second half of the year, following a rise in interest rates and a fall in the yields posted by mutual funds, there was a movement back into M2+. In this annual review of the monetary aggregates, the author discusses the reasons for these shifts and their implications for M2+.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Monetary aggregates

• Searching for the Liquidity Effect in Canada

  Staff Working Paper 1994-12 Ben Fung, Rohit Gupta

  This paper examines the empirical evidence of the liquidity effect in Canada. In the presence of the liquidity effect, the initial impact of an unanticipated expansionary monetary policy is to lower nominal and real interest rates for a short period of time.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary aggregates
• November 8, 1994

  The demand for currency and the underground economy

  Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 1994 Thérèse Laflèche

  The underground economy in Canada has attracted increased attention over the past few years, yet there is no precise way to measure its size. Recent estimates vary between 4 per cent and 15 per cent of gross domestic product. This article provides an overview of measurement issues and recent estimates. It then focusses on the "monetary" approach to estimating the size of the underground economy. This approach is based on the assumption that the demand for bank notes provides a clue as to the size of the underground economy. The article concludes that estimates that use this approach must be viewed with considerable caution. They are based on a number of assumptions that are difficult to verify and that significantly affect the results.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Monetary aggregates

• An Analysis of the Information Content of Alternative Monetary Aggregates

  Technical Report No. 48 Doug Hostland, Stephen S. Poloz, Paul Storer

  In this study the authors compare the information content of alternative monetary aggregates with respect to total spending in the economy, using data for Canada. The analysis considers 46 monetary measures, about half of which constitute conventional summation aggregates, while the remainder are superlative indices of monetary services based on the Fisher Ideal formula. The […]

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Monetary aggregates JEL Code(s): E, E5, E51