Financial Stability, Monetarism and the Wicksell Connection

In today's discussions of central banking, maintaining macro-financial stability has only recently appeared along-side the pursuit of low inflation as an important policy goal. This is in strong contrast to the earlier literature, where financial stability was often the main concern of the theory of central banking. This theme is explored here first from the point of view of the monetarist tradition, which treated an excess demand for money which the central bank in its capacity as lender of last resort had an obligation to relieve as a central feature of financial crises; and then from that of a later Wicksellian tradition, where co-ordination failures in the inter-temporal allocation of resources that it was monetary policy's task to avoid, were emphasized. Though there are no long-lost sure cures for financial instability awaiting discovery in the older literature, its emphasis on the potential for markets to fail to clear provides a helpful perspective on the phenomenon, often missing from modern models of the conduct of monetary policy.Financial stability, financial instability, crises, co-ordination failure, lender of last resort, inflation, monetarism, forced saving, Wicksell

Passive Money, Active Money, and Monetary Policy

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 effecton 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.

The legacy of the monetarist controversy

Monetary theory

Better Late Than Never: Towards a Systematic Review of Canada's Monetary Policy Regime

The Bank of Canada has announced that its inflation-targeting regime, in place since 1991, is at last to get a thorough review. The Issues needing examination include whether to move to a "price stability" program, which might be both feasible and desirable.monetary policy, inflation targeting

Getting Talk Back on Target: The Exchange Rate and the Inflation Rate

Recent efforts by the Bank of Canada to “talk down” the dollar in its public statements have led to public perceptions that the Bank is considering action to weaken it.In permitting this response to gather momentum, the Bank has stepped onto a slippery slope, because if talk seems to be failing, people might reasonably expect direct intervention in the exchange market to follow.Bank of Canada, inflation rate, exchange rate

The Bank of Canada Needs to Nurture those Green Shoots of Recovery

To encourage new growth in the Canadian economy, the Bank of Canada should be actively irrigating financial markets with a growing money supply. Recovery needs support from the continued credibility of the Bank’s 2 percent inflation target – but there are signs that this credibility is fading over short time horizons, dampening low interest rates’ positive effect on spending.monetary policy, Bank of Canada, money supply growth

Free Banking and the Bank of Canada

Economists in the nineteenth century spent considerable time discussing the merits of a free-banking system, in which each commercial bank would be able to issue its own notes and deposits, subject to a convertibility requirement backed by its own gold reserves. Such a system, the proponents argued, would be able to deliver price-level stability yet be flexible enough to withstand the vicissitudes of the business cycle. Moreover, there would be no need for central banks. While this idea has received less attention in recent years, some economists still put it forward as a practical alternative to the current system. Laidler suggests that the centralizing tendencies in banking would inevitably undermine competition within a free-banking system, and lead to the natural emergence of one dominant bank. Other developments in the twentieth century, most notably the demise of the gold standard and widespread agreement that governments should play a determining role in setting monetary policy goals, have also limited the practicality of such a system. Laidler examines the Bank of Canada's history from the free-banking perspective and concludes that the current system of inflation targeting provides a much better anchor for orderly price-level behaviour than the free-banking system's convertibility could ever guarantee.

Inflation Targets Versus International Monetary Integration - A Canadian Perspective

The debate about Canadian-U.S. monetary integration is surveyed. The choice is among overall monetary orders,rather than exchange rate regimes and questions of policy credibility and political accountability are crucial. Canada’s recent economic performance under inflation targets, and arguments that the flexible exchange rate has undermined real economic performance are assessed. The most economically attractive among alternative monetary orders, the adoption by Canada of the US dollar with provision for meaningful Canadian input into policy decisions and supervision of the financial system - is not politically attainable. Intermediate arrangements are unattractive and clearly inferior to Canada’s current monetary order.monetary policy, exchange rates, central banks, inflation.

Harvard, the Chicago tradition, and the quantity theory : a reply to James Ahiakpor

James Ahiakpor's critique of our 2002 work on the relationship between a certain 1932 Harvard memorandum on antidepression policies and the 1932 Harris Foundation manifesto dealing with the same issues misses the significance of these documents, and of the relationships between them, both for the literature of the time, and for later debates about the origins of 1930s Chicago ideas about monetary economics. He is correct to locate these documents in a more general quantity theoretic tradition, but his discussion here is marred by a serious misunderstanding of the so-called forced saving doctrine and its place in that tradition. Finally, Ahiakpor fails to appreciate that the absence of positive policy proposals from the 1934 Harvard studies of The Economics of the Recovery Program, a point that he himself notes, is a major contributing factor to that book's mediocrity

Putting Money Back into Monetary Policy: A Monetary Anchor for Price and Financial Stability

The Bank of Canada should pay closer attention to the effects of money and credit growth on inflation and asset markets. The authors contend that maintaining price stability should remain the Bank’s only formal goal, but say greater attention should be paid to asset market stability. Once the role of asset markets in the mechanics of inflation or price-level targeting is made explicit, such a policy will promote orderly asset market behaviour. This hinges on the role broader money and credit aggregates play in the transmission mechanism that links monetary policy to the behaviour of the rest of the economy.Monetary Policy, Bank of Canada, inflation, price stability, asset market stability, price-level targeting, broad money aggregate (M2+)