Staff research

• December 31, 2018

  Research Update - December 2018

  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

• Limited Commitment, Endogenous Credibility and the Challenges of Price-level Targeting

  Staff Working Paper 2018-61 Gino Cateau, Malik Shukayev

  This paper studies the cost of limited commitment when a central bank has the discretion to adjust policy whenever the costs of honoring its past commitments become high. Specifically, we consider a central bank that seeks to implement optimal policy in a New Keynesian model by committing to a price-level target path.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credibility, Inflation targets, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, E52

• Inference in Games Without Nash Equilibrium: An Application to Restaurants’ Competition in Opening Hours

  Staff Working Paper 2018-60 Erhao Xie

  This paper relaxes the Bayesian Nash equilibrium (BNE) assumption commonly imposed in empirical discrete choice games with incomplete information. Instead of assuming that players have unbiased/correct expectations, my model treats a player’s belief about the behavior of other players as an unrestricted unknown function. I study the joint identification of belief and payoff functions.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): C, C5, C57, L, L1, L13, L8, L85

• Credibility, Flexibility and Renewal: The Evolution of Inflation Targeting in Canada

  Staff Discussion Paper 2018-18 Thomas J. Carter, Rhys R. Mendes, Lawrence L. Schembri

  In 1991, Canada became the second country to adopt an inflation target as a central pillar of its monetary policy framework. The regime has proven much more successful than initially expected, both in achieving price stability and in stabilizing the real economy against a wide range of shocks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Credibility, Inflation targets, Monetary policy, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E58, E6, E61

• The Role of Corporate Saving over the Business Cycle: Shock Absorber or Amplifier?

  Staff Working Paper 2018-59 Xiaodan Gao, Shaofeng Xu

  We document countercyclical corporate saving behavior with the degree of countercyclicality varying nonmonotonically with firm size. We then develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms to explain the pattern and study its implications for business cycles.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E2, E20, E22, E3, E32, G, G3, G31, G32

• 2017 Methods-of-Payment Survey: Sample Calibration and Variance Estimation

  Technical Report No. 114 Heng Chen, Marie-Hélène Felt, Christopher Henry

  This technical report describes sampling, weighting and variance estimation for the Bank of Canada’s 2017 Methods-of-Payment Survey. Under quota sampling, a raking ratio method is implemented to generate weights with both post-stratification and nonparametric nonresponse weight adjustments.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C8, C81, C83

• 2017 Methods-of-Payment Survey Report

  Staff Discussion Paper 2018-17 Christopher Henry, Kim Huynh, Angelika Welte

  Cash use is declining while contactless and mobile payments are on the rise.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital currencies and fintech, Financial services JEL Code(s): D, D8, D83, E, E4, E41

• Should the Central Bank Issue E-money?

  Staff Working Paper 2018-58 Charles M. Kahn, Francisco Rivadeneyra, Tsz-Nga Wong

  Should a central bank take over the provision of e-money, a circulable electronic liability? We discuss how e-money technology changes the tradeoff between public and private provision, and the tradeoff between e-money and a central bank's existing liabilities like bank notes and reserves.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital currencies and fintech, Financial services, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): E, E4, E42, E5, E51, E58

• The Cost of the Government Bond Buyback and Switch Programs in Canada

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-41 Bo Young Chang, Jun Yang, Parker Liu

  This note examines the costs of the Government of Canada bond buyback and switch programs between 1998 and 2016. Our analysis indicates that the auction design of the buyback program was effective in retiring government debt with minimal costs resulting from bid shading in auctions and price impact.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Debt management JEL Code(s): D, D4, D44

• Fundamental Drivers of Existing Home Sales in Canada

  Staff Discussion Paper 2018-16 Taylor Webley

  Existing home sales’ share of Canada’s economic pie has been rising in recent years, and variation around this trend has resulted in outsized contributions to changes in real gross domestic product (GDP). In this context, we use a cointegration framework to estimate the level of resale activity across the Canadian provinces that is supported by fundamentals—namely, full-time employment, housing affordability and migration flows—to help look through the volatility.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models, Housing JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, C23, E, E2, E27, R, R2, R21