911勛圖

���We���ve just gone through two years where the price of rent and the price of food went up very dramatically.��� Yet often ignored is how people of differing income levels have different spending patterns that leave poorer households vulnerable to price increases.

���Food and shelter are necessities that poor people spend a larger fraction of their budget on,��� says Distinguished 911勛圖 Professor of Economics, Dr. Krishna Pendakur. ���When the price of those two things increases, that means inflation is a much bigger deal for poor people than for rich people.���

The Bank of Canada exists ���to regulate credit and currency in the best interests of the economic life of the nation.��� In Pendakur���s words, ���They���re interested in price stability or inflation rates being low. But what inflation rate?��� He asks, ���Whose inflation rate? This idea that the bank should pay attention to inflation and inequality is one angle of my proposal.���

the Bank of Canada Fellowship, giving him substantial resources to pursue this research agenda. , awarded to ���academics who are making exemplary contributions to economic and financial research in Canada,��� is a great honour awarded to very few people. The five-year term enables Pendakur to continue to build upon an impressive three-decade career researching and writing on poverty and economic disparities. 

Drawing upon his expertise in economic history, public economics, labour economics, household economics, econometric theory, and microeconomic theory, Pendakur���s proposal is three-fold:

1. Measure the cost of living focusing on how changes inflation may differ for households with different income levels
2. Create a single social cost of living index that the central bank could use in inflation targeting
3. Illuminate the cost of living through frontier microeconomic and econometric theory using barcode-level scanner data

When receiving the congratulatory phone call from Tiff Macklem, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Pendakur heard an unexpected but pleasant surprise: Macklem was particularly impressed with a fourth aspect of Pendakur���s research, which he is well known for, but was not included in his proposal---his work on the economic inequalities facing Indigenous peoples.  

In 2011, Krishna Pendakur and his brother, Ravi Pendakur, a sociologist at the University of Ottawa, published . Building upon findings from their highly-cited 1998 paper, , the brothers achieved another pivotal accomplishment in the literature. ���In the ethnic mosaic that is Canada,��� Pendakur says, ���there are a whole bunch of inequalities but the largest is that facing Indigenous peoples.���

Pendakur feels that this should be a focus of the country���s central bank, ���and they actually have policy tools that are relevant and important for Indigenous peoples.���

As a Bank of Canada Fellow, Pendakur will be attending the Learning Exchange in Ottawa this May. Empowered now to relay data and recommendations to the country���s chief monetary authority, he aims to ���push their research agendas towards understanding and mitigating price inflation faced by poor households and Indigenous inequality. These are areas where I can contribute that���s very different from what others are contributing.���