Bank of Canada Operations and Policy

This book deals with four aspects of central banking in Canada: the relationship between the Bank of Canada and the Government; the nature of the Bank’s various objectives, the development and nature of the Bank’s control techniques, and the operations of the Bank during periods of peacetime unemployment, war, and postwar readjustments and inflation.

This volume was preceded by a study published in the Canadian Economic Studies Series, Bank of Canada Operations, 1935-54, which was twice reprinted. Steady and increasing demand having indicated clearly the need for a standard reference to the development of central banking in Canada, and it was decided to bring out this new letterpress version. In this edition, Mr. Neufeld has incorporated a number of changes introduced by the Bank of Canada since 1955 and brought up to date the discussion of policy; changes in the short-term money market and in the central bank’s techniques have been noted and discussed, and some parts of the chapter on objective have been further clarified. Certain limitations and difficulties of monetary policy were clearly revealed in the period of monetary restraint which ended in late 1957 and these, together with some indication of the direction towards further improvement, are outlined in a new final chapter.

Bank of Canada Operations and Policy is the most detailed examination of the growth of Canada’s central bank that has yet been made and will be useful to all those concerned with central banking and monetary policy.