Monetary Policy Council Member

Jean Boivin Associate Professor HEC Montréal

Jean Boivin was appointed Associate Professor of Economics at HEC-Montréal in July 2006. He started his academic career at Columbia Business School, where he still is Adjunct Professor of Finance and Economics. He has taught macroeconomics to MBA and Executive MBA students and PhD courses on empirical methods for monetary economics and finance. He received his B.Sc. from the University of Montréal and his MA and PhD from Princeton University, New Jersey.

Professor Boivin’s research focuses on monetary policy, macroeconomic forecasting and finance. In his most recent research, he has been concerned with the empirical modeling and optimal design of monetary policy in a data-rich environment. Central banks, policy makers and financial market participants routinely monitor literally hundreds of macroeconomic indicators to assess where the economy is and where it is heading. Yet, most macroeconomic empirical models are based on a handful of macroeconomic indicators. In his research, along with various co-authors, Professor Boivin has developed an empirical model of the macroeconomy that can exploit all the information available at any given point, and could thus potentially better inform monetary policy in real time. Evidence from US data suggests that this approach might in fact lead to significant gains, both for the assessment of the state of the economy and for forecasting. Professor Boivin is currently working on the implementation of these techniques in the Canadian context.

Professor Boivin’s research has been published in leading academic journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Monetary Economicsand the Journal of Econometrics, and was financed by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Quebec’s government Fonds pour les Chercheurs et l’Aide à la Recherche.

He is a member of the Cambridge (MA) based National Bureau of Economic Research, the Center for Interuniversity Research and Analysis of Organizations (CIRANO) in Montréal and the Centre Interuniversitaire sur le Risque, les Politiques Economiques et l’Emploie (CIRPEE). He is editorial advisor at the Canadian Journal of Economics and associate editor at the Journal of Business Economics and Statistics.