E2 - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment
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From Micro to Macro Hysteresis: Long-Run Effects of Monetary Policy
We explore the long-run effects of a monetary policy shock in a Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian model built on the micro evidence that job losses lead to persistently lower individual earnings through a combination of skill decay and abandonment of the labour force. -
Consumer Credit Regulation and Lender Market Power
We investigate the welfare consequences of consumer credit regulation in a dynamic, heterogeneous-agent model with endogenous lender market power. Lenders post credit offers and borrowers—some informed and others uninformed—apply for credit. We calibrate the model to match characteristics of the unsecured consumer credit market and use the calibrated model to evaluate interest rate ceilings. -
Household Food Inflation in Canada
We study food inflation rates for Canadian households during periods of low and high inflation from 2012Q4 to 2023Q4. Households experienced more varied inflation rates during the recent high inflation. Cumulative food inflation has been 2.2 percentage points higher for lower-income households than for highest-income households since the inflation surge. -
Let’s Get Physical: Impacts of Climate Change Physical Risks on Provincial Employment
We analyze 40 years’ worth of natural disasters using a local projection framework to assess their impact on provincial labour markets in Canada. We find that disasters decrease hours worked within a week and lower wage growth in the medium run. Our study highlights that disasters affect vulnerable workers through the income channel. -
Price Discounts and Cheapflation During the Post-Pandemic Inflation Surge
We study how price variation within a store changes with inflation, and whether households exploit these changes to reduce the burden of inflation. We find that price changes from discounts mitigated the inflation burden while cheapflation exacerbated it. -
Housing Affordability and Parental Income Support
In many countries, the cost of housing has greatly outpaced income growth, leading to a housing affordability crisis. Leveraging Canadian loan-level data and quasi-experimental variation in payment-to-income constraints, we document an increasing reliance of first-time homebuyers on financial help from their parents, through mortgage co-signing. We show that parental support can effectively relax borrowing constraints—potentially to riskier borrowers. -
Credit Card Minimum Payment Restrictions
We study a government policy that restricts repayment choices with the aim of reducing credit card debt and estimate its effects by applying a difference-in-differences methodology to comprehensive credit-reporting data about Canadian consumers. We find the policy has trade-offs: reducing revolving debt comes at a cost of reducing credit access, and potentially increasing delinquency. -
Impacts of interest rate hikes on the consumption of households with a mortgage
We assess how much the recent rate-hike cycle has and will affect mortgage borrowers' consumption through its impacts on mortgage payments. Our analysis provides insights into the effects of changes in monetary policy on the consumption of mortgage borrowers. -
Sources of pandemic-era inflation in Canada: an application of the Bernanke and Blanchard model
We explore the drivers of the surge in inflation in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. This work is part of a joint effort by 11 central banks using the model developed by Bernanke and Blanchard (2023) to identify similarities and differences across economies.