Since the work of Doepke and Schneider (2006a) and Meh and Terajima (2008), we know that inflation causes major redistribution of wealth -between households and the government, between nationals and foreigners, and between households within the same country. Two types of monetary policy, inflation targeting (IT) and price level targeting (PT), have very different implications for the price level path subsequent to a price-level shock, and consequently, have different redistributional properties which is what we explore in this paper. For Canada, we show that the magnitude of redistributions of an unexpected 1% price-level increase under IT is about three times larger than under PT. Households' and foreigners' wealth losses from a price level increase is matched by the gains of the government. Even though this redistribution is zero-sum, we observe positive effects on GDP due to the wealth loss, the lower value of the debt and its associated fiscal adjustment, and the non-linear effects on work effort of the redistribution of wealth across households. Finally, the direction of the change in the weighted welfare of households depends on the fiscal policy. en fonction du niveau des prix -ont des répercussions très différentes sur l'évolution du niveau des prix après une variation inattendue de ce dernier, et donc des effets de redistribution dissemblables. Ce sont ces effets qui intéressent les auteurs. Ceux-ci montrent que, au Canada, les effets de redistribution d'une hausse imprévue de 1 % du niveau des prix sont environ trois fois plus élevés si l'on prend pour cible le taux d'inflation plutôt que le niveau des prix. Les pertes des ménages et des non-résidents attribuables à une élévation du niveau des prix sont compensées par les gains de l'État. Même si les pertes et les gains s'annulent, le produit intérieur brut augmente par suite de la baisse de la richesse, du recul de la dette en termes réels et de l'assainissement concomitant des finances publiques ainsi qu'à la faveur des effets non linéaires de la redistribution iv de la richesse entre les ménages sur l'offre de travail. Enfin, le sens de la variation du bien-être pondéré des ménages dépend de la politique budgétaire. JEL classification: D31, E21, E31, E44, E52, E63

Some evidence points to the procyclicality of leverage among financial institutions leading to aggregate volatility. This procyclicality occurs when financial institutions finance their assets with non-equity funding (i.e., debt financed asset expansions). Wholesale funding is an important source of market-based funding that allows some institutions to quickly adjust their leverage. As such, financial institutions that rely on wholesale funding are expected to have higher degrees of leverage procyclicality. Using high frequency balance sheet data for the universe of banks, this study tries to identify (i) if such a positive link exists between the assets and leverage in Canada, (ii) how wholesale funding plays a role for this link, and (iii) market and macroeconomic factors associated with this link. The findings of the empirical analysis suggest that a strong positive link exists between asset growth and leverage growth, and the use to wholesale funding is an important determinant of this relationship. Furthermore, liquidity of several short-term funding markets matters for procyclicality of leverage. JEL classification: G21, G28 Bank classification: Financial stability; Financial system regulation and policies; Recent economic and financial developments RésuméCertaines données semblent indiquer que la procyclicité du levier des institutions financières contribue à la volatilité globale. Cette procyclicité apparaît lorsque l'expansion des actifs de ces institutions est financée par l'endettement plutôt que par l'émission d'actions. Source importante de mobilisation de fonds sur les marchés, le financement de gros permet à certaines institutions de réajuster rapidement leur levier. En conséquence, on devrait observer plus de procyclicité pour la volatilité des institutions financières qui s'appuient sur ce mode de financement. En utilisant des données à haute fréquence des bilans de l'univers bancaire, les auteurs cherchent à déterminer 1) si cette relation positive entre les actifs et le levier existe au Canada, 2) en quoi le financement de gros joue un rôle dans cette relation, et 3) quels facteurs, macroéconomiques et liés aux marchés, sont associés à cette relation. Il ressort de leur analyse empirique qu'une relation positive étroite unit la croissance des actifs et celle du levier, et que le recours au financement de gros est un déterminant de premier plan de cette relation. En outre, la procyclicité du levier est influencée par le degré de liquidité de plusieurs marchés de financement à court terme.

There is currently a policy debate on potential refinements to monetary policy regimes in countries with low and stable inflation such as the U.S. and Canada. For example, in Canada, a systematic review of the current inflation targeting framework is underway. An issue that has generally received relatively less attention in this debate is the redistributional effects of inflation.This omission is likely to be important since the welfare costs of inflation depend not only on aggregate effects but also on redistributional consequences. The goal of this paper is to contribute to this policy debate by assessing the redistributional effects of inflation in Canada that arise through the revaluation of nominal assets and liabilities. We find that the redistributional effects of inflation are sizeable even for low and moderate inflation episodes. The main winners are young middle-class households with substantial amounts of mortgage debt. Besides young households, inflation also represents a windfall gain for the government because of its long-term debt. Old households, rich households, and the middle-aged middle-class lose from inflation, largely due to their sizeable holdings of bonds and non-indexed defined benefit pension assets.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may Non-Technical SummaryThis paper offers an overview of the implications of the global financial cycle for conventional and unconventional monetary policies and macroprudential policy in small, open economies (SOEs) such as Canada. We start by reviewing the recent evidence on financial cycles. An important new finding is that national financial cycles may have been partly subsumed into a global financial cycle. The global financial cycle is driven, in part, by monetary policy decisions in the United States. Low-for-long U.S. policy rates cause global financial intermediaries to search for yield, which in turn leads to a decline in the cross-section of international risk premia. Risk premia form an important part of conventional and unconventional monetary policy transmission mechanisms in both large and small economies.Next, we review the available policy actions that could be undertaken by SOE central banks and regulatory authorities to limit the effects of the global financial cycle. We show that conventional monetary policy actions in both large and small economies are affected by movements in global risk premia. The paper also examines the effectiveness of unconventional monetary policies originating in SOEs that are not coordinated with those in large countries.If unconventional policies undertaken during financial crises are not completely effective in restoring output or inflation to their target levels, the question then arises as to whether central banks can use more aggressive conventional monetary actions to lean against the buildup of debt associated with the boom phase of the global financial cycle. We highlight new work that evaluates the potential for central banks to lean against the winds of the global financial cycle. This new work shows that the cost of leaning is quite high relative to the benefits of lowering the likelihood of either entering a house price correction episode or of triggering a new financial crisis.We then assess to what extent macroprudential policy tools could be an alternative to curb increased risk-taking behaviour during the boom phase of the cycle. In large economies, a number of macroprudential policies are designed to break the chain that links asset allocation decisions by financial intermediaries with the resultant declines in risk premia. Such policies are likely to be less effective in SOEs, as global premia will likely not change in the face of portfolio switches by s...

No abstract