Policy Options

Friedrich Hayek, who won his Nobel prize in economics in 1974, once said: “I strongly feel that the chief task of the economic theorist or political philosopher should be to...

1. Exchange rates: Fixed or flexible? Creation of the euro, among other devel- opments, has increasingly focused atten- tion on the question of fixed exchange rates versus flexible exchange...

Chicago in the 60s, no doubt, offered one of the great times in economics; maybe Keynes was the center of a great moment in economics, but the time we...

The United States of America has been a successful currency union for two centuries. Few people—historians, economists, or ordinary citizens—doubt that having a single currency, the dollar, contributed mightily...

The debate that appears on pages 10 and 30 between Milton Friedman and Robert Mundell, two of the greatest monetary economists of the 20th century, is a pleasure to...

Milton Friedman and Bob Mundell are widely—and rightly—regarded as the best monetary economists alive today, and all those who have read their debate will readily appreciate why. Economists are...

The choice between fixed and flexible exchange rates is one of the most important in macroeconomic policy, but the debate that surrounds it seems deceptively simple. Though non-economists seldom claim...

Canadians thinking about changing their monetary regime—abandoning a floating exchange rate and inflation targets for a pegged exchange rate, or perhaps giving the Canadian dollar up altogether—need to beware of...

In the words of University of Chicago economist Arnold Harberger, “It seems that we will never finish debating the issue” of fixed versus flexible exchange rates. Different kinds of fixed...

Shortly after Victoria Day, Paul Martin entered the political record books as the longest-serving federal finance minister since the First World War. Others may have survived longer in this usually...