(February 2 – 14:55 ET) – The Bank of Canada has issued a compendium Gordon Thiessen’s speeches. Now that the former bank governor has handed the reins to his successor, the bank has decided it’s an opportune time to publish his collected works.

“His term, judged by the Canadian economy’s performance, has been a great success. Since Gordon Thiessen assumed the Governorship, unemployment has fallen from over 11% to under 7% of the labour force, real GDP has risen by about 30%, while CPI inflation has moved only from around 2% per annum to 3%,” says David Laidler, Bank of Montreal professor at the University of Western Ontario, in the introduction.

“It is not always that a professional economist can argue with a straight face that the dismal science itself has provided tools that have helped to improve policy. But in this case it is possible. In the following pages Gordon Thiessen himself describes the theoretical vision underlying Canada’s monetary policy regime, says something about how it has worked in practice, and places both theory and practice in the context of the evolution of economic thought in Canada and elsewhere since the Bank of Canada’s foundation,” says Laidler.
-IE Staff

http://www.bankofcanada.ca/pdf/thiessen-eng.book.pdf