Estimating Canadian Monetary Policy Regimes∗

Andolfatto and Gomme (2003) find evidence that Canadian monetary policy appears to alternate between high and low money growth rate regimes, and that private-sector belief formation over these unobserved regimes could induce significant persistence in the propagation of monetary policy shocks. In this paper, we examine the sensitivity of these conclusions by re-estimating the data allowing for the possibility of multiple regimes. In doing so, we find evidence of three (rather than two) distinct monetary policy regimes. In particular, we find that one policy regime is characterized by high money growth with moderate variability. The other two policy regimes are characterized by a common low money growth rate; they are distinguished primarily by their variability (high and low). A simulation exercise based on our three-regime model reveals an improvement in accounting for the behavior of the Canadian economy over some episodes; notably, the sharp increase in interest rates and the curtailment of economic activity in the early 1980s.