Although the concept of monetary policy lag has historical roots deep in the monetary economics literature, relatively little attention has been paid to the idea. In this paper, we build on Svensson’s (1997) inflation targeting framework by explicitly taking into account the lagged effect of...

Monetary policy can be implemented effectively without reserve requirements as long as cost incentives ensure a predictable demand for settlement balances. A central bank can then achieve the level of short-term interest rates that it desires, using market-oriented instruments only. In Canada,...

The author provides a non-technical explanation of the role played by the exchange rate in Canada's inflation-targeting monetary policy. He reviews the motivation for inflation targeting and describes the monetary transmission mechanism. Though the exchange rate is an integral component of the...

This paper studies how banks simultaneously manage the two sides of their balance sheet and its implications for bank risk taking and real economic activity. First, we analyze how changes in funding affect the supply of bank loans. We then examine how the supply of credit by banks that rely more...

The days when secrecy and opacity were the bywords of central banking are gone. The advent of inflation targeting in the early 1990s acted as the catalyst for enhanced transparency and communications in the conduct of monetary policy. In the wake of the 2007-09 global financial crisis, this...

The effectiveness of monetary policy depends, to a large extent, on market expectations of its future actions. In a standard New Keynesian business-cycle model with rational expectations, systematic monetary policy reduces the variance of inflation and the output gap by at least two-thirds....

Inflation-targeting central banks around the world often state their inflation objectives with regard to the consumer price index (CPI). Yet the literature on optimal monetary policy based on models with nominal rigidities and more than one sector suggests that CPI inflation is not always the...

Using the Bank of Canada's main projection and policy-analysis model, ToTEM, this paper measures the welfare gains of switching from inflation targeting to price-level targeting under imperfect credibility. Following the policy change, private agents assign a probability to the event that the...

In the United States, the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate of promoting stable inflation and maximum employment. Since the Fed directly controls only one instrument-the federal funds rate-the authors argue that the Fed's priorities continuously alternate between inflation and economic...

Two aspects of the recent monetary history of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand stand out: the sensitivity of their dollars to prices of resource-based commodities, and inflation targeting. This paper explores various aspects of these phenomena. It uses standard empirical models, and an...