Economic models

• ToTEM: The Bank of Canada's New Quarterly Projection Model

  Technical Report No. 97 Stephen Murchison, Andrew Rennison

  The authors provide a detailed technical description of the Terms-of-Trade Economic Model (ToTEM), which replaced the Quarterly Projection Model (QPM) in December 2005 as the Bank's principal projection and policy-analysis model for the Canadian economy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E1, E17, E2, E20, E3, E30, E4, E40, E5, E50, F, F4, F41

• An Optimized Monetary Policy Rule for ToTEM

  Staff Working Paper 2006-41 Jean-Philippe Cayen, Amy Corbett, Patrick Perrier

  The authors propose a monetary policy rule for the Terms-of-Trade Economic Model (ToTEM), the Bank of Canada's new projection and policy-analysis model for the Canadian economy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52

• Education and Self-Employment: Changes in Earnings and Wealth Inequality

  Staff Working Paper 2006-40 Yaz Terajima

  The author quantitatively studies the interaction between education and occupation choices and its implication for the relationship between the changes in earnings inequality and the changes in wealth inequality in the United States over the 1983–2001 period.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Labour markets JEL Code(s): D, D3, D31, I, I2, I21, J, J2, J23
• October 22, 2006

  ToTEM: The Bank of Canada's New Projection and Policy-Analysis Model

  Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2006 Paul Fenton, Stephen Murchison

  The Terms-of-Trade Economic Model, or ToTEM, replaced the Quarterly Projection Model (QPM) in December 2005 as the Bank's principal projection and policy-analysis model for the Canadian economy. Benefiting from advances in economic modelling and computer power, ToTEM builds on the strengths of QPM, allowing for optimizing behaviour on the part of firms and households, both in and out of steady state, in a multi-product environment. The authors explain the motivation behind the development of ToTEM, provide an overview of the model and its calibration, and present several simulations to illustrate its key properties, concluding with some indications of how the model is expected to evolve going forward.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models
• October 20, 2006

  MUSE: The Bank of Canada's New Projection Model of the U.S. Economy

  Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2006 Marc-André Gosselin, René Lalonde, Nicolas Parent

  Staff projections provided for the Bank of Canada's monetary policy decision process take into account the integration of Canada's very open economy within the global economy, as well as its close real and financial linkages with the United States. To provide inputs for this projection, the Bank has developed several models, including MUSE, NEUQ (the New European Quarterly Model), and BoC-GEM (Bank of Canada Global Economy Model), to analyze and forecast economic developments in the rest of the world. The authors focus on MUSE, the model currently used to describe interaction among the principal U.S. economic variables, including gross domestic product, inflation, interest rates, and the exchange rate. Brief descriptions are also provided of NEUQ and BoC-GEM.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models, International topics
• October 8, 2006

  Modelling Financial Channels for Monetary Policy Analysis

  Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2006 Ian Christensen, Ben Fung, Césaire Meh

  The Bank of Canada considers a wide range of information and analysis before making a monetary policy decision and uses carefully articulated models to produce economic projections and to examine alternative scenarios. This article describes an ongoing research agenda at the Bank to develop models in which financial variables play an active role in the transmission of monetary policy actions to economic activity. Such models can help to analyze information from the financial side of the economy and to provide an overall view of the implications of financial developments for the current economic outlook. The authors also explain how this research can help address other issues relevant to the objectives of monetary policy, including how asset-price movements should be taken into account in the monetary policy framework.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Economic models, Monetary policy transmission

• The Macroeconomic Effects of Non-Zero Trend Inflation

  Staff Working Paper 2006-34 Robert Amano, Steve Ambler, Nooman Rebei

  The authors study the macroeconomic effects of non-zero trend inflation in a simple dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with sticky prices.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Inflation and prices, Inflation targets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E3, E32

• Multinationals and Exchange Rate Pass-Through

  Staff Working Paper 2006-30 Alexandra Lai, Oana Secrieru

  The authors examine the impact of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on exchange rate pass-through in an environment where an MNE engages in Cournot (quantity) competition with domestic and foreign rivals.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Exchange rates, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): F, F2, F23, L, L1, L16

• Using Monthly Indicators to Predict Quarterly GDP

  Staff Working Paper 2006-26 Yi Zheng, James Rossiter

  The authors build a model for predicting current-quarter real gross domestic product (GDP) growth using anywhere from zero to three months of indicators from that quarter.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, C5, C53

• Convergence in a Stochastic Dynamic Heckscher-Ohlin Model

  Staff Working Paper 2006-23 Partha Chatterjee, Malik Shukayev

  The authors characterize the equilibrium for a small economy in a dynamic Heckscher-Ohlin model with uncertainty.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models JEL Code(s): F, F4, F43, O, O4, O41