The C.D. Howe Institute has appointed a new member of the institute’s Monetary Policy Council (MPC). Pierre Siklos, Professor of Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University, specializes in macroeconomics with an emphasis on the study of inflation, central banks, and financial markets, as well as a focus on applied time-series analysis.

Siklos’ research has been published in a variety of international journals and he has been a consultant to many institutions and central banks. He has also been a visiting lecturer at several universities in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. His “Money and Banking” textbook, now in its fifth edition, is the leading textbook in this field in Canada. Siklos is the managing editor of the “North American Journal of Economics and Finance”. In 2008 he will be chairman of the Bundesbank Foundation of International Monetary Economics.

“Pierre Siklos’s research on monetary policy and its effects on financial markets and the economy is outstanding,” says William Robson, president and CEO of Robson, who is the MPC’s non-voting chairman. “He is one of Canada’s foremost experts on central banking in Canada and abroad. The MPC’s ability to comment effectively on the Bank of Canada’s actions will be much stronger for his participation.”

Siklos replaces Tim O’Neill of O’Neill Strategic Economics, who has been a member of the MPC since its inception in 2003.

The MPC comprises 12 of Canada’s most distinguished financial-market and monetary economists. By convening to discuss the Bank of Canada’s target for the overnight rate — the benchmark interest rate it uses to influence monetary conditions in Canada — shortly before each of the Bank’s interest-rate announcements, the MPC a regular, independent assessment of the central bank’s stance as it seeks to achieve its 2% inflation target.