The Bank of Canada today announced that Professor Gregor Smith of Queen’s University is the recipient of the BOC research fellowship for 2006.

Professor Smith, one of the leading contributors to the Canadian economics community, has earned international recognition for his work in empirical macroeconomics, open-economy macroeconomics, and economic history.

“Professor Smith is an outstanding economist who continues to make an important contribution to leading-edge research,” said David Dodge, Governor of the Bank of Canada. “The Bank is proud to support an economist of his calibre who has had such a far-reaching impact as a researcher, teacher, and leader in the field of economics in Canada.”

The BOC’s Fellowship Program is designed to encourage leading-edge research and to develop expertise in Canada in a number of areas critical to the bank’s mandate: macroeconomics, monetary economics, international finance, as well as the economics of financial markets and institutions, including their stability.

In 2003, the first year of the program, BOC granted fellowships to Professor Michael Devereux of the University of British Columbia and Professor Shouyong Shi of the University of Toronto. Professor René Garcia of the Université de Montréal was the 2004 Fellowship recipient, and Professor Paul Beaudry of the University of British Columbia was the 2005 recipient.

BOC plans to award an additional fellowship next year, for a total of six fellowships by the end of 2007.