Staff working papers

• Evaluating Forecasts from Factor Models for Canadian GDP Growth and Core Inflation

  Staff Working Paper 2007-8 Frédérick Demers, Calista Cheung

  This paper evaluates the performance of static and dynamic factor models for forecasting Canadian real output growth and core inflation on a quarterly basis. We extract the common component from a large number of macroeconomic indicators, and use the estimates to compute out-of-sample forecasts under a recursive and a rolling scheme with different window sizes.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E3, E37

• Technology Shocks and Business Cycles: The Role of Processing Stages and Nominal Rigidities

  Staff Working Paper 2007-7 Louis Phaneuf, Nooman Rebei

  This paper develops and estimates a dynamic general equilibrium model that realistically accounts for an input-output linkage between firms operating at different stages of processing. Firms face technological change which is specific to their processing stage and charge new prices according to stage-specific Calvo-probabilities.

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

• Monetary Policy Committees in Action: Is There Room for Improvement?

  Staff Working Paper 2007-6 Philipp Maier

  More than 80 central banks use a committee to take monetary policy decisions. The composition of the committee and the structure of the meeting can affect the quality of the decision making.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): C, C9, C92, D, D7, D70, E, E5, E58

• Impact of Electronic Trading Platforms on the Brokered Interdealer Market for Government of Canada Benchmark Bonds

  Staff Working Paper 2007-5 Natasha Khan

  This study examines the impact of increased transparency, brought about by the introduction of three electronic trading systems, on the brokered interdealer market for Government of Canada benchmark securities. Using the CanPX dataset for the 2-, 5-, 10-, and 30-year benchmarks, the paper finds some evidence of decreased bid-ask spreads for the 30-year benchmark in the months following the introduction of the electronic platforms.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G14

• Price Discovery in Canadian Government Bond Futures and Spot Markets

  Staff Working Paper 2007-4 Christopher Chung, Bryan Campbell, Scott Hendry

  In this paper we look at the relative information content of cash and futures prices for Canadian Government bonds. We follow the information-share approaches introduced by Hasbrouck (1995) and Harris et al (1995), applying the techniques in Gonzalo-Granger (1995), to evaluate the relative contributions of trading in the cash and futures markets to the price discovery process.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G13, G14

• Time-Consistent Control in Non-Linear Models

  Staff Working Paper 2007-3 Steve Ambler, Florian Pelgrin

  We show how to use optimal control theory to derive optimal time-consistent Markov-perfect government policies in nonlinear dynamic general equilibrium models, extending the result of Cohen and Michel (1988) for models with quadratic objective functions and linear dynamics. We replace private agents' costates by flexible functions of current states in the government's maximization problem.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): C, C6, C63, E, E6, E61, E62

• Housing Market Cycles and Duration Dependence in the United States and Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2007-2 Rose Cunningham, Ilan Kolet

  Housing wealth is a large component of total wealth and plays an important role in aggregate business cycles. In this paper, we explore data on real house price cycles at the aggregate level and city level for the United States and Canada.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C4, C41, E, E3, E32, R, R2, R21

• How Far Can Forecasting Models Forecast? Forecast Content Horizons for Some Important Macroeconomic Variables

  Staff Working Paper 2007-1 John Galbraith, Greg Tkacz

  For stationary transformations of variables, there exists a maximum horizon beyond which forecasts can provide no more information about the variable than is present in the unconditional mean. Meteorological forecasts, typically excepting only experimental or exploratory situations, are not reported beyond this horizon; by contrast, little generally accepted information about such maximum horizons is available for economic variables.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53