Monetary and financial indicators

• How to Improve Inflation Targeting at the Bank of Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2002-23 Nicholas Rowe

  This paper shows that if the Bank of Canada is optimally adjusting its monetary policy instrument in response to inflation indicators to target 2 per cent inflation at a two-year horizon, then deviations of inflation from 2 per cent represent the Bank's forecast errors, and should be uncorrelated with its information set, which includes two-year lagged values of the instrument and the indicators. Positive or negative correlations are evidence of systematic errors in monetary policy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation targets, Monetary and financial indicators, Monetary policy implementation JEL Code(s): E, E5
• August 20, 2002

  Information and Analysis for Monetary Policy: Coming to a Decision

  Bank of Canada Review - Summer 2002 Tiff Macklem

  This article outlines one of the Bank's key approaches to dealing with the uncertainty that surrounds decisions on monetary policy: the consideration of a wide range of information from a variety of sources. More specifically, it describes the information and analysis that the monetary policy decision-makers—the Governing Council of the Bank of Canada—receive in the two or three weeks leading up to a decision on the setting of the policy rate—the target overnight interest rate. The article also describes how the Governing Council reaches this decision.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Monetary and financial indicators, Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy implementation

• Corporate Bond Spreads and the Business Cycle

  Staff Working Paper 2002-15 Zhiwei Zhang

  This paper examines the predictive power of credit spreads from the corporate bond market. The high-yield bond spread and investment-grade spread can explain 68 per cent and 42 per cent of output variations one year ahead, while the term spread based on government debts can explain only 12 per cent of them.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Monetary and financial indicators, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E5, G, G1