Monetary Policy Transmission in Canada – A High Frequency Identification Approach

Abstract I study the effects of monetary policy shocks in Canada on economic and financial variables. With a narrow window around a policy announcement, I create a new set of intraday level, high-frequency monetary policy surprises using the three-month Canadian Bankers’ acceptance rate futures. I use this measure to identify monetary policy shocks as an external instrument in a monthly VAR. Following a 25 basis point contractionary policy shock, I find that the decline in output is more powerful and peaks earlier than previous empirical works show, with a peak decline of 0.5 % points after 18 months. Price level declines are similarly more powerful and earlier, reaching a decline of 0.3 % points after 24 months. In addition, increases in the credit and mortgage spreads indicate the presence of a domestic credit channel of monetary policy transmission for Canada. Finally, I show that the surprise measure is robust to information effects.