This book deals with four aspects of central banking in Canada: the relationship between the Bank of Canada and the Government; the nature of the Bank’s various objectives, the development and nature of the Bank’s control techniques, and the operations of the Bank during periods of peacetime unemployment, war, and postwar readjustments and inflation.

This volume was preceded by a study published in the Canadian Economic Studies Series, Bank of Canada Operations, 1935-54, which was twice reprinted. Steady and increasing demand having indicated clearly the need for a standard reference to the development of central banking in Canada, and it was decided to bring out this new letterpress version. In this edition, Mr. Neufeld has incorporated a number of changes introduced by the Bank of Canada since 1955 and brought up to date the discussion of policy; changes in the short-term money market and in the central bank’s techniques have been noted and discussed, and some parts of the chapter on objective have been further clarified. Certain limitations and difficulties of monetary policy were clearly revealed in the period of monetary restraint which ended in late 1957 and these, together with some indication of the direction towards further improvement, are outlined in a new final chapter.

Bank of Canada Operations and Policy is the most detailed examination of the growth of Canada’s central bank that has yet been made and will be useful to all those concerned with central banking and monetary policy.

Born in Saskatchewan, E. P. Neufeld graduated in economics from the University of Saskatchewan in 1950 and received his Ph D in 1954 from the London School of Economics. After two years with the Bank of England Dr. Neufeld joined the staff of the Department of Political Economy at the Univeristy of Toronto. He was appointed Professor of Economics in 1965 and is also Director of Graduate Studies in this department.

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"This careful analysis will be of great interest to anyone concerned with current Canadian financial and economic problems, and it adds a useful and illuminating chapter to the literature of central banking."

The Economist

"The subject is important and its study highly rewarding…since most countries hope or intend, by planning, to emulate Canada’s rate of economic growth, the account of Canadian central banking is of wide interest…we must applaud the authoritative closing of an important gap in the literature."

Economica

"While Bank of Canada Operations will obviously be of special value to students with an immediate interest in Canadian economic development, it illustrates the difficult problems involved in monetary control in an open economy, and other readers will therefore find it both interesting and highly rewarding."

American Economic Review

"This book offers, in addition to a vast amount of statistical information, comments, criticisms, and evaluations which add greatly to its general usefulness…Neufeld has not, in the process of making his intensive study of the Bank of Canada, lost the capacity to analyse its actions objectively and, on occasion, critically."

The Business Quarterly