Stephen Murchison

Stephen Murchison

Advisor

Stephen Murchison was appointed Advisor to the Governor, effective 4 May 2015. In this role, which focuses on the Bank of Canada’s international activities, Mr. Murchison helps develop the strategy for the Bank’s global engagement, supports the Governor at meetings of the Bank for International Settlements, and coordinates the Bank’s work with other international partners and forums. He is also the business lead on interdepartmental research on e-money.

Mr. Murchison joined the Bank in 1997 as an economist in the Canadian Projection and Model Development division of the Research Department, now Canadian Economic Analysis (CEA). Beginning in 1999, Mr. Murchison spent two years at the Department of Finance. He returned to the Bank in 2001 and occupied the increasingly senior positions of Principal Researcher, Assistant Chief, Research Director and Deputy Chief of CEA. In August 2013, Mr. Murchison was appointed Chief of CEA, a position he held until his current appointment.

Born in Barrie, Ontario, Mr. Murchison has a master’s degree in economics from Wilfrid Laurier University.

Biographical note: Stephen Murchison

Contact

Stephen Murchison

Advisor
Executive

Bank of Canada
234 Laurier Avenue West
Ottawa, ON, K1A 0G9

Latest

3 February 2016 Opening Statement before the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce

Opening Statement Stephen Murchison Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce Ottawa, Ontario
Stephen Murchison discusses the causes and economic impact of movements in the Canadian dollar exchange rate.
Content Type(s): Press, Speeches

13 November 2014 Should Forward Guidance Be Backward-Looking?

Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2014 Rhys R. Mendes, Stephen Murchison
When constrained by the zero lower bound, some central banks have communicated a threshold that must be met before short-term interest rates would be permitted to rise. Simulation results for Canada show that forward guidance that is conditional on achieving a price-level threshold can theoretically raise demand and inflation expectations by significantly more than unemployment thresholds. This superior performance is attributable to the fact that the price-level threshold depends on past inflation outcomes. In practice, however, history-dependent thresholds such as this might be more challenging for central banks to communicate.
Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review Article Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E58

ToTEM II: An Updated Version of the Bank of Canada’s Quarterly Projection Model

Technical Report No. 100 José Dorich, Michael K. Johnston, Rhys R. Mendes, Stephen Murchison, Yang Zhang
This report provides a detailed technical description of an updated version of the Terms-of-Trade Economic Model (ToTEM II), which replaced ToTEM (Murchison and Rennison 2006) in June 2011 as the Bank of Canada’s quarterly projection model for Canada.
Content Type(s): Technical Reports Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E1, E17, E2, E20, E3, E30, E4, E40, E5, E50, F, F4, F41

19 August 2010 Price-Level Targeting and Relative-Price Shocks

Bank of Canada Review - Summer 2010 Stephen Murchison
Stephen Murchison reviews the findings of recent Bank of Canada research on the relative merits of inflation targeting and price-level targeting (PLT) for a small open economy, such as Canada's, that is susceptible to large and persistent terms-of-trade shocks.
Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review Article Topic(s): Central bank research, Inflation targets, Monetary policy framework

9 March 2010 Monetary Policy Rules in an Uncertain Environment

Bank of Canada Review - Spring 2010 Gino Cateau, Stephen Murchison
This article examines recent research on the influence of various forms of economic uncertainty on the performance of different classes of monetary policy rules: from simple rules to fully optimal monetary policy under commitment. The authors explain why uncertainty matters in the design of monetary policy rules and provide quantitative examples from the recent literature. They also present results for several policy rules in ToTEM, the Bank of Canada's main model for projection and analysis, including rules that respond to price level, rather than to inflation.
Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review Article Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models, Monetary policy framework, Uncertainty and monetary policy

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