Staff research

• December 31, 2014

  Research Update - December 2014

  This monthly newsletter features the latest research publications by Bank of Canada economists including external publications and working papers published on the Bank of Canada’s website.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Research newsletters

• Demographics and the Demand for Currency

  Staff Working Paper 2014-59 Geoffrey R. Dunbar

  I use data from the Bank of Canada’s Bank Note Distribution System and exploit a natural experiment offered by the timing of Easter in the Gregorian calendar to analyze the effects of demographic change for currency demand.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C31, C36, E, E4, E41

• Addressing Household Indebtedness: Monetary, Fiscal or Macroprudential Policy?

  Staff Working Paper 2014-58 Sami Alpanda, Sarah Zubairy

  In this paper, we build a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with housing and household debt, and compare the effectiveness of monetary policy, housing-related fiscal policy, and macroprudential regulations in reducing household indebtedness.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial system regulation and policies, Housing, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E6, E62, R, R3, R38

• International Spillovers of Policy Uncertainty

  Staff Working Paper 2014-57 Stefan Klößner, Rodrigo Sekkel

  Using the Baker et al. (2013) index of policy uncertainty for six developed countries, this paper estimates spillovers of policy uncertainty. We find that spillovers account for slightly more than one-fourth of the dynamics of policy uncertainty in these countries, with this share rising to one-half during the financial crisis.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, D, D8, D80, F, F4, F42

• Why Do Canadian Firms Invest and Operate Abroad? Implications for Canadian Exports

  Staff Discussion Paper 2014-7 Martin Coiteux, Patrick Rizzetto, Lena Suchanek, Jane Voll

  Canadian foreign direct investment and sales of Canadian multinational firms’ operations abroad, particularly in the manufacturing industry and in the United States, have accelerated sharply over the past decade.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): International topics, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): F, F1, F10, F2, F21, F23, F4, F41

• High-Frequency Trading around Macroeconomic News Announcements: Evidence from the U.S. Treasury Market

  Staff Working Paper 2014-56 George Jiang, Ingrid Lo, Giorgio Valente

  This paper investigates high-frequency (HF) market and limit orders in the U.S. Treasury market around major macroeconomic news announcements. BrokerTec introduced i- Cross at the end of 2007 and we use this exogenous event as an instrument to analyze the impact of HF activities on liquidity and price efficiency.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G12, G14

• Persistent Leverage in Portfolio Sorts: An Artifact of Measurement Error?

  Staff Working Paper 2014-55 Michael Mueller

  Studies such as Lemmon, Roberts and Zender (2008) demonstrate how stable firms’ capital structures are over time, and raise the question of whether new theories of capital structure are needed to explain these phenomena.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C1, C18, G, G3, G32

• International House Price Cycles, Monetary Policy and Risk Premiums

  Staff Working Paper 2014-54 Gregory Bauer

  Using a panel logit framework, the paper provides an estimate of the likelihood of a house price correction in 18 OECD countries. The analysis shows that a simple measure of the degree of house price overvaluation contains a lot of information about subsequent price reversals.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Housing JEL Code(s): C, C2, E, E4, E43, R, R2, R21

• The Impact of U.S. Monetary Policy Normalization on Capital Flows to Emerging-Market Economies

  Staff Working Paper 2014-53 Tatjana Dahlhaus, Garima Vasishtha

  The Federal Reserve’s path for withdrawal of monetary stimulus and eventually increasing interest rates could have substantial repercussions for capital flows to emerging-market economies (EMEs).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International topics, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E5, E52, F, F3, F33, F4, F42

• Targeting Inflation from Below - How Do Inflation Expectations Behave?

  Staff Working Paper 2014-52 Michael Ehrmann

  Inflation targeting (IT) had originally been introduced as a device to bring inflation down and stabilize it at low levels. Given the current environment of persistently weak inflation in many advanced economies, IT central banks must now bring inflation up to target.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Inflation targets JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E3, E31, E5, E52, E58