In my post on Mark Carney’s appointment to the top job at the Bank of Canada, I said

That’s twice in a row that a governor has been an external candidate –
although he has worked there before. I suspect that Bank employees who
are thinking about the top job will start sending their CVs to the
Department of Finance or perhaps the IMF.

It’s always gratifying to see one’s predictions come true:

The Prime Minister announced today that Tiff Macklem,
Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, has been appointed Associate
Deputy Minister of Finance, effective 1 November. Mr. Macklem will also
serve as Canada’s Finance Deputy at the G-7, G-20, and the Financial
Stability Forum.

Mr. Macklem will replace Mark Carney in these roles. Mr. Carney was
recently appointed the next Governor of the Bank of Canada, effective 1
February 2008 and is joining the Bank of Canada as an Adviser to the
Governor effective 1 November.

Tiff was in fact the person I had in mind when I wrote those lines: like Mark Carney (and unlike Paul Jenkins), he has a PhD, and (unlike Mark Carney)  he also has kept  in touch with academia (his article ‘Aggregate wealth in Canada‘ is one of my favorite pieces of applied work). He’s done everything that could have been expected of him, and done it very well; it would be a very bad signal to younger staffers if that particular career path turned out to be a dead end.

The next question is: who will be the next Senior Deputy Governor at the Bank of Canada? And – more pointedly – why would he or she accept the job?