A paper on inflation written by Federico Ravenna takes top honours
Best paper of 2021 according to the Canadian Economics Association
July 14, 2022
Federico Ravenna, affiliated professor in the Department of Applied Economics of HEC Montréal has been awarded the Harry G. Johnson Prize at the 56th Annual Conference of the Canadian Economics Association.
Co-authored with Marcus Mølbak Ingholt, economist at Danmarks Nationalbank, the paper was rated as one of the best among all those that have been published in the Canadian Journal of Economics in 2021.
The impact of inflation targeting: Testing the good luck hypothesis was published in the journal in February 2021. Another paper, by Donna L. Feir and Christopher Auld, published in the same edition also won the prize ex-aequo.
In their analysis, the authors wish to test the “good luck hypothesis” to explain the decline in inflation witnessed in industrialized countries from the mid-1980s. Indeed, “the inflation stabilization can be explained by a shift in monetary policy or by a lucky period of low volatility in business cycle shocks”, states the abstract of the paper. The authors examine Canada’s experience in this area. They conclude that after a shift in monetary policy, “luck” can only have a negligible effect and that the targeting policy as advocated by Canada over the past decades had finally had a considerable effect in terms of reducing inflation.
About the Harry G. Johnson Prize
The Harry G. Johnson Prize has been awarded annually since 1977 and has a cash value of $2,000. It is awarded on the recommendation of a committee of three people given a 3-year term by the Canadian Economics Association.
The Prize is named in honour of Canadian economist Harry G. Johnson, who notably taught at the University of Chicago and at the London School of Economics. His work made him one of the most influential Canadian economists of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in the fields of international finance, international trade theory and macroeconomics.
Access the award-winning paper by Federico Ravenna et Marcus Mølbak Ingholt