Staff working papers

• How Should Unemployment Insurance Vary over the Business Cycle?

  Staff Working Paper 2020-47 Serdar Birinci, Kurt See

  Should unemployment benefits be more generous during economic downturns? The optimal amount and duration of benefit payments ultimately depend on the demographic and wealth characteristics of benefit recipients.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Fiscal policy, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E3, E32, J, J6, J64, J65

• Earnings Dynamics and Intergenerational Transmission of Skill

  Staff Working Paper 2020-46 Lance Lochner, Youngmin Park

  How are your past, current and future earnings related to those of your parents? We explore this by using 37 years of Canadian tax data on two generations.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Labour markets, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): C, C3, C33, J, J2, J24, J6, J62

• Understanding Trend Inflation Through the Lens of the Goods and Services Sectors

  Staff Working Paper 2020-45 Yunjong Eo, Luis Uzeda, Benjamin Wong

  The goods and services sectors have experienced considerably different dynamics over the past three decades. Our goal in this paper is to understand how such contrasting behaviors at the sectoral level affect the aggregate level of trend inflation dynamics.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): C, C1, C11, C3, C32, E, E3, E31, E5, E52

• Production Networks and the Propagation of Commodity Price Shocks

  Staff Working Paper 2020-44 Shutao Cao, Wei Dong

  We examine the macro implications of commodity price shocks in a model with multiple production sectors that are interconnected within a commodity-exporting small open economy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, International topics JEL Code(s): D, D5, D57, F, F4, F41

• Outside Investor Access to Top Management: Market Monitoring versus Stock Price Manipulation

  Staff Working Paper 2020-43 Josef Schroth

  Should managers be paid in stock options if they provide stock-market participants with information about the firm? This paper studies how firm owners trade off the benefit of stock-price incentives and better-informed market participants against the cost of potential stock-price manipulation.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, D86, G, G1, G14, G3, G32, G34, M, M1, M12, M4, M41

• On Causal Networks of Financial Firms: Structural Identification via Non-parametric Heteroskedasticity

  Staff Working Paper 2020-42 Ruben Hipp

  Banks’ business interactions create a network of relationships that are hidden in the correlations of bank stock returns. But for policy interventions, we need causality to understand how the network changes. Thus, this paper looks for the causal network anticipated by investors.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets, Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C1, C3, C32, C5, C58, L, L1, L14

• Interbank Asset-Liability Networks with Fire Sale Management

  Staff Working Paper 2020-41 Zachary Feinstein, Grzegorz Halaj

  Raising liquidity when funding is stressed creates pressure on the financial market. Liquidating large quantities of assets depresses their prices and may amplify funding shocks. How do banks weathering a funding crisis contribute to contagion risk?

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C6, C62, C63, C7, C72, G, G0, G01, G1, G11

• Forward Guidance and Expectation Formation: A Narrative Approach

  Staff Working Paper 2020-40 Christopher S. Sutherland

  How exactly does forward guidance influence interest rate expectations?

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Monetary policy, Monetary policy communications, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): D, D8, D83, D84, E, E3, E37, E5, E52, E58

• The New Benchmark for Forecasts of the Real Price of Crude Oil

  Staff Working Paper 2020-39 Amor Aniss Benmoussa, Reinhard Ellwanger, Stephen Snudden

  How can we assess the quality of a forecast? We propose a new benchmark to evaluate forecasts of temporally aggregated series and show that the real price of oil is more difficult to predict than we thought.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C1, C5, C53, Q, Q4, Q47

• Cyclicality of Schooling: New Evidence from Unobserved Components Models

  Staff Working Paper 2020-38 Barbara Sadaba, Sunčica Vujič, Sofia Maier

  What is the time-varying impact of economic cycles on decisions to invest in human capital?

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E3, I, I2, J, J2