Charles Freedman

 B.Com. (Toronto), B.A., M.A. (Oxford), M.A., Ph.D. (MIT)

Scholar in Residence (Economics) and Co-Director

Office: B-840 Loeb, 613-520-2600 x 3769

E-mail: charles_freedman [at] carleton [dot] ca

Languages spoken other than English: French

Research fields: monetary economics, macroeconomics

Expertise:
• monetary policy
• inflation targeting
• financial stability

Selected publications:

“The Case for Global Fiscal Stimulus” (with Michael Kumhof, Douglas Laxton, and Jaewoo Lee), IMF Staff Position Note, SPN/09/03 (6 March 2009), 27 pages.

“Financial Stability: What It Is and Why It Matters” (with Clyde Goodlet), C.D. Howe Institute Commentary, No. 256 (November 2007), 23 pages.

“Central Bank Independence,” Central Banking, Monetary Theory and Practice: Essays in Honour of Charles Goodhart, Volume One, ed. Paul Mizen, Edward Elgar, 2003, pp. 90–110.

“Monetary Policy Implementation: Past, Present and Future—Will Electronic Money Lead to the Eventual Demise of Central Banking?” International Finance, Vol. 3, No. 2 (July 2000), pp. 211–227.

“The Goal of Price Stability: The Debate in Canada,” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Vol. 23, No. 3 (August 1991), Pt. 2, pp. 613–618.

Short biography:

Charles Freedman (Ph.D., MIT) worked at the Bank of Canada from 1974 to 2003, serving as Deputy Governor from 1988 to 2003. As Deputy Governor, his principal concerns were matters relating to the design of monetary policy and issues regarding financial institutions and clearing and settlement systems. As a member of the Governing Council and the Executive Management Committee he shared responsibility for formulating and implementing monetary policy and for dealing with broad organizational and strategic issues at the Bank.

Since his retirement from the Bank, Dr. Freedman has been a Scholar in Residence in the Department of Economics at Carleton University. He has also served as a consultant for a number of central banks—the Bank of England, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Central Bank of Chile, the Norges Bank, the National Bank of Ukraine, the Central Bank of Turkey, the Central Bank of Pakistan, and the Bank of Russia, the latter four as part of IMF missions—and has participated in IMF workshops in Kiev, Istanbul, and Chiang Mai (Thailand) on inflation targeting in which a number of emerging-economy central banks took part. He has also been a visiting scholar at the IMF Institute. He is currently editing a book on inflation targeting for the IMF. Dr. Freedman is also a director and chair of the audit committee of The Canadian Depository for Securities Limited and a Research Fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute.

Prior to joining the Bank of Canada in 1974, Dr. Freedman was a faculty member at the University of Minnesota. During 1989–90, he spent 11 months at the Department of Finance as the Clifford Clark Visiting Economist. He was co-chair of the Payments System Advisory Committee to the Department of Finance in 1996–97 and was a member of the Financial Stability Forum and of the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems at the Bank for International Settlements. He has published widely in economic journals and volumes of conference proceedings.