Staff working papers

• Financial Factors and Labour Market Fluctuations

  Staff Working Paper 2011-12 Yahong Zhang

  What are the effects of financial market imperfections on unemployment and vacancies? Since standard DSGE models do not typically model unemployment, they abstract from this issue.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E4, E44, J, J6

• Mixed Frequency Forecasts for Chinese GDP

  Staff Working Paper 2011-11 Philipp Maier

  We evaluate different approaches for using monthly indicators to predict Chinese GDP for the current and the next quarter (‘nowcasts’ and ‘forecasts’, respectively). We use three types of mixed-frequency models, one based on an economic activity indicator (Liu et al., 2007), one based on averaging over indicator models (Stock and Watson, 2004), and a static factor model (Stock and Watson, 2002).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C50, C53, E, E3, E37, E4, E47

• Sovereign Default Risk Premia, Fiscal Limits and Fiscal Policy

  Staff Working Paper 2011-10 Huixin Bi

  We develop a closed economy model to study the interactions among sovereign risk premia, fiscal limits, and fiscal policy. The stochastic fiscal limits, which measure the ability and willingness of the government to service its debt, arise endogenously from a dynamic Laffer curve.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E6, E62, H, H3, H30, H6, H60

• Inventories, Markups and Real Rigidities in Sticky Price Models of the Canadian Economy

  Staff Working Paper 2011-9 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Virgiliu Midrigan

  Recent New Keynesian models of macroeconomy view nominal cost rigidities, rather than nominal price rigidities, as the key feature that accounts for the observed persistence in output and inflation. Kryvtsov and Midrigan (2010a,b) reassess these conclusions by combining a theory based on nominal rigidities and storable goods with direct evidence on inventories for the U.S.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, F, F1, F12

• Belief Dispersion and Order Submission Strategies in the Foreign Exchange Market

  Staff Working Paper 2011-8 Ingrid Lo, Stephen Sapp

  This paper empirically examines how dispersions across investors beliefs influence traders order submission decisions in the foreign exchange market. Previous research has found that dispersion in traders beliefs regarding future macroeconomic announcements has a significant impact on both price dynamics and trading volume before the announcements in the foreign exchange and other financial markets.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D4, G, G1

• Money and Costly Credit

  Staff Working Paper 2011-7 Mei Dong

  I study an economy in which money and credit coexist as means of payment and the settlement of credit requires money. The model extends recent developments in microfounded monetary theory to address the choice of payment methods and the effects of inflation. Whether a buyer uses money or credit depends on the fixed cost of credit and the inflation rate.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Inflation: costs and benefits JEL Code(s): E, E4, E41, E5, E50

• The Private Equity Premium Puzzle Revisited

  Staff Working Paper 2011-6 Katya Kartashova

  In this paper, I extend the results of Moskowitz and Vissing-Jørgensen (2002) on the returns to entrepreneurial investments in the United States. First, following the authors’ methodology I replicate the original findings from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) for the period 1989–1998 and show that the returns to private and public equity are similar.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Interest rates, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): G, G1, G11, G12, G2, G24, G3, G31, G32

• Private Information Flow and Price Discovery in the U.S. Treasury Market

  Staff Working Paper 2011-5 George Jiang, Ingrid Lo

  Existing studies show that U.S. Treasury bond price changes are mainly driven by public information shocks, as manifested in macroeconomic news announcements and events. The literature also shows that heterogeneous private information contributes significantly to price discovery for U.S. Treasury securities.

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

• Counterfeit Quality and Verification in a Monetary Exchange

  Staff Working Paper 2011-4 Ben Fung, Enchuan Shao

  Recent studies on counterfeiting in a monetary search framework show that counterfeiting does not occur in a monetary equilibrium. These findings are inconsistent with the observation that counterfeiting of bank notes has been a serious problem in some countries.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, D83, E, E4, E42, E5, E50

• Discounting in Mortgage Markets

  Staff Working Paper 2011-3 Jason Allen, Robert Clark, Jean-François Houde

  This paper studies discounting in mortgage markets. Using transaction-level data on Canadian mortgages, we document that over time there's been an increase in the average discount, along with substantial dispersion.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial services JEL Code(s): D, D4, G, G2, G21, L, L0