Staff research

• Alternative Futures for Government of Canada Debt Management

  Staff Discussion Paper 2018-15 Corey Garriott, Sophie Lefebvre, Guillaume Nolin, Francisco Rivadeneyra, Adrian Walton

  This paper presents four blue-sky ideas for lowering the cost of the Government of Canada’s debt without increasing the debt’s risk profile. We argue that each idea would improve the secondary-market liquidity of government debt, thereby increasing the demand for government bonds and thus lowering their cost at issuance.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Debt management, Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G2, G24, H, H6, H63

• GDP by Industry in Real Time: Are Revisions Well Behaved?

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-40 Patrick Rizzetto

  The monthly data for real gross domestic product (GDP) by industry are used extensively in real time both to ground the Bank of Canada’s monitoring of economic activity and in the Bank’s nowcasting tools, making these data one of the most important high-frequency time series for Canadian nowcasting.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Central bank research, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, C8, C82, E, E0, E01

• The Impact of Surprising Monetary Policy Announcements on Exchange Rate Volatility

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-39 Adam Albogatchiev, Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Jabir Sandhu, Reginald Xie

  We identify a few Bank of Canada press releases that had the largest immediate impact on the exchange rate market. We find that volatility increases after these releases, but the effect is short-lived and mostly dissipates after the first hour, on average. Beyond the first hour, the size of the effect is similar to what we observe for other economic releases, such as those for inflation or economic growth data.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Exchange rates, Financial markets, Monetary policy JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, F, F3, F31, G, G1, G10, G12, G14, G15

• Does US or Canadian Macro News Drive Canadian Bond Yields?

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-38 Bruno Feunou, Rodrigo Sekkel, Morvan Nongni-Donfack

  We show that a large share of low-frequency (quarterly) movements in Canadian government bond yields can be explained by macroeconomic news, even though high-frequency (daily) changes are driven by other shocks. Furthermore, we show that US macro news—not domestic news— explains most of the quarterly variation in Canadian bond yields.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Financial markets, International topics, Monetary policy JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, E, E4, E43
• November 30, 2018

  Research Update - November 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

• The Trade War in Numbers

  Staff Working Paper 2018-57 Karyne B. Charbonneau, Anthony Landry

  We build upon new developments in the international trade literature to isolate and quantify the long-run economic impacts of tariff changes on the United States and the global economy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Recent economic and financial developments, Trade integration JEL Code(s): F, F1, F11, F13, F14, F15, F5, F50, F6, F62, F68

• The Propagation of Regional Shocks in Housing Markets: Evidence from Oil Price Shocks in Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2018-56 Lutz Kilian, Xiaoqing Zhou

  How do global oil price shocks spread through Canada’s economy? With Canada’s regionally diverse economy in mind, we explore the implications of oil price shocks for Canadian housing markets and regional economies. We show that the belief that oil price shocks only matter in oil-rich regions is false.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Housing, International topics, Labour markets, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): F, F4, F43, Q, Q3, Q33, Q4, Q43, R, R1, R12, R3, R31

• Markets Look Beyond the Headline

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-37 Bruno Feunou, James Kyeong, Raisa Leiderman

  Many reports and analyses interpret the release of new economic data based on the headline surprise—for instance, total inflation, real GDP growth and the unemployment rate. However, we find that headline news alone cannot adequately explain the responses of market prices to new information. Rather, market prices react more strongly, on average, to non-headline news such as the composition of GDP growth, quality of jobs created and revisions to past data. Thus, tracking the impact of non-headline information released on the news day is crucial in analyzing how markets interpret and react to new economic data.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Asset pricing, Exchange rates, Interest rates JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43, G, G1, G12, G14

• An Alternative Estimate of Canadian Potential Output: The Multivariate State-Space Framework

  Staff Discussion Paper 2018-14 Lise Pichette, Maria Bernier, Marie-Noëlle Robitaille

  In this paper, we extend the state-space methodology proposed by Blagrave et al. (2015) and decompose Canadian potential output into trend labour productivity and trend labour input. As in Blagrave et al. (2015), we include output growth and inflation expectations from consensus forecasts to help refine our estimates.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Economic models, Potential output JEL Code(s): C, C5, E, E0, E5

• Macroprudential FX Regulations: Shifting the Snowbanks of FX Vulnerability?

  Staff Working Paper 2018-55 Toni Ahnert, Kristin Forbes, Christian Friedrich, Dennis Reinhardt

  Can macroprudential foreign exchange (FX) regulations on banks reduce the financial and macroeconomic vulnerabilities created by borrowing in foreign currency? To evaluate the effectiveness and unintended consequences of macroprudential FX regulations, we develop a parsimonious model of bank and market lending in domestic and foreign currency and derive four predictions.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Financial institutions, Financial system regulation and policies, International financial markets JEL Code(s): F, F3, F32, F34, G, G1, G15, G2, G21, G28