Staff research

• Corporate Bond Spreads and the Business Cycle

  Staff Working Paper 2002-15 Zhiwei Zhang

  This paper examines the predictive power of credit spreads from the corporate bond market. The high-yield bond spread and investment-grade spread can explain 68 per cent and 42 per cent of output variations one year ahead, while the term spread based on government debts can explain only 12 per cent of them.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Monetary and financial indicators, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E5, G, G1

• Entrepreneurship, Inequality, and Taxation

  Staff Working Paper 2002-14 Césaire Meh

  This paper confirms the conjecture that the evaluation of tax policy leads to very different conclusions once the role of entrepreneurs is considered. Contrary to previous literature, the author finds that switching from a progressive to a proportional income tax system has a negligible effect on wealth inequality in the United States.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Fiscal policy JEL Code(s): D, D3, D31, E, E6, E62, H, H2, H20, H23

• Towards a More Complete Debt Strategy Simulation Framework

  Staff Working Paper 2002-13 David Bolder

  An effective technique governments use to evaluate the desirability of different financing strategies involves stochastic simulation. This approach requires the postulation of the future dynamics of key macroeconomic variables and the use of those variables in the construction of a debt charge distribution for each individual financing strategy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Debt management, Econometric and statistical methods, Interest rates JEL Code(s): C, C0, C5, G, G0

• Modelling Financial Instability: A Survey of the Literature

  Staff Working Paper 2002-12 Alexandra Lai

  The magnitude and frequency of recent financial crises underscore the importance of understanding financial instability for the purpose of crisis prevention and crisis management.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial markets, Financial services JEL Code(s): G, G2, G20, G21, G28

• Risk, Entropy, and the Transformation of Distributions

  Staff Working Paper 2002-11 Mark Reesor, Don McLeish

  The exponential family, relative entropy, and distortion are methods of transforming probability distributions. We establish a link between those methods, focusing on the relation between relative entropy and distortion.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): C, C0, C1, D, D8, G, G0

• La fiabilité des estimations de l'écart de production au Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2002-10 Jean-Philippe Cayen, Simon van Norden

  In this paper, we measure, with Canadian data, the scope of the revisions to real-time estimates of the output gap generated with several univariate and multivariate techniques. We also make an empirical evaluation of the usefulness of the output gap estimates for predicting inflation.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Potential output JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32

• The Microstructure of Multiple-Dealer Equity and Government Securities Markets: How They Differ

  Staff Working Paper 2002-9 Toni Gravelle

  Although dealership government and equity securities have, on the surface, similar market structures, the author demonstrates that some subtle differences exist between them that are likely to significantly affect the way market-makers trade, and as such have an impact on the liquidity that they provide.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Debt management, Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G15, G18

• Restructuring in the Canadian Economy: A Survey of Firms

  Staff Working Paper 2002-8 Carolyn Kwan

  The regional offices of the Bank conducted a survey of 140 Canadian companies (representing all non-government sectors of the economy) to study the effects of restructuring (defined as a major change in the way firms do business).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets, Productivity, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): O, O5, O51

• Contribution of ICT Use to Output and Labour-Productivity Growth in Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2002-7 Hashmat Khan, Marjorie Santos

  There is ample evidence that information and communication technologies (ICT) contributed significantly to the surge in output and labour-productivity growth in the United States in the late 1990s.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Productivity JEL Code(s): O, O4, O5

• Currency Fluctuations, Liability Dollarization, and the Choice of Exchange Rate Regimes in Emerging Markets

  Staff Working Paper 2002-6 Patrick Osakwe

  Traditional models of exchange rate regimes ignore the destabilizing effects of sharp and unanticipated exchange rate movements.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rate regimes JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, F, F3, F31, F4, F41