This paper revisits Canada's pioneering experience with floating exchange rate over the period 19501962. It examines whether the floating rate was the best option for Canada in the 1950s by developing and estimating a New Keynesian small open economy model of the Canadian economy. The model is...

In this paper, we examine three famous episodes of deliberate deflation (or disinflation) in U.S. history, including episodes following the Civil War, World War I, and the Volcker disinflation of the early 1980s. These episodes were associated with widely divergent effects on the real economy,...

What is the long-run relationship between monetary and fiscal policies? This paper provides an answer by examining a large set of data covering major economies during the past 115 years. The evidence suggests the existence of a close interaction between the monetary regime, that is the behaviour...

What is the long-run relationship between monetary and fiscal policies? This paper provides an answer by examining a large set of data covering major economies during the past 115 years. The evidence suggests the existence of a close interaction between the monetary regime, that is the behaviour...

This paper describes the challenges of globalization in terms of the logic underpinning four distinct policy constraints or "trilemmas" and their interrelationship; in particular the disturbances that arise from capital flows and the difficulties of adjusting monetary policies to a global...

In this paper we revisit the Canadian experience with floating exchange rates since 1950. Canada was a pioneer in successfully adopting a floating exchange rate during the Bretton Woods pegged exchange rate regime. Since then, most advanced countries have followed the Canadian example

This paper analyzes the role of transparency and credibility in accounting for the widely divergent macroeconomic effects of three episodes of deliberate monetary contraction: the post-Civil War deflation, the post-WWI deflation, and the Volcker disinflation. Using a dynamic general equilibrium...

The relatively infrequent nature of major credit distress events makes a historical approach particularly useful. Using a combination of historical narrative and econometric techniques, we identify major periods of credit distress from 1875 to 2007, examine the extent to which credit distress...