D2 - Production and Organizations
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An Anatomy of Firms’ Political Speech
We study the distribution of political speech across U.S. firms. We develop a measure of political engagement based on firms’ communications (earning calls, regulatory filings, and social media) by training a large language model to identify statements that contain political opinions. Using these data, we document five facts about firms’ political engagement. -
Total factor productivity growth projection for Canada: A sectoral approach
We propose a tool that decomposes TFP growth into sectoral contributions. The analysis incorporates three structural factors—digitalization, aging and climate change policies—and measures their contributions. Overall, we expect that aggregate TFP growth will slow down in the 2020s below both its historical average and the average from the 2010s. -
Pricing behaviour and inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic: Insights from consumer prices microdata
Using the microdata underlying the Canadian consumer price index, we study how often and by how much firms changed their prices during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the surge in inflation was mainly associated with retailers raising prices much more often than before. We also find that more recently, corporate price-setting behaviour appears to be approaching pre-pandemic norms. -
COVID-19 Hasn’t Killed Merchant Acceptance of Cash: Results from the 2023 Merchant Acceptance Survey
The Bank of Canada’s Merchant Acceptance Survey finds that 96% of small and medium-sized businesses in Canada accepted cash in 2023. Acceptance of debit and credit cards has increased to 89%, and acceptance of digital payments has also increased. However, Canada is far from being a cashless society. -
Regulation, Emissions and Productivity: Evidence from China’s Eleventh Five-Year Plan
We study the degree to which China’s 11th Five-Year Plan softens trade-offs between emissions and output. Our model suggests efficient regulation could have further increased aggregate productivity by 3.5% and output by 4.7% without any increase in aggregate emissions. -
Digitalization: Prices of Goods and Services
This paper outlines and assesses the various channels through which digitalization can affect prices of goods and services. -
Predicting Changes in Canadian Housing Markets with Machine Learning
We apply two machine learning algorithms to forecast monthly growth of house prices and existing homes sales in Canada. Although the algorithms can sometimes outperform a linear model, the improvement in forecast accuracy is not always statistically significant. -
The contribution of firm profits to the recent rise in inflation
We measure the contribution to inflation from the growth in markups of Canadian firms. The dynamics of inflation and markups suggest that changes in markups could account for less than one-tenth of inflation in 2021. Further, they suggest that peak inflation was driven primarily by changes in the costs of firms. -
Markups and inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic
We find that prices and costs for consumer-oriented firms moved roughly one-for-one during the COVID-19 pandemic. This means firms fully passed rising costs through to the prices they charged. However, our results are suggestive, given data limitations and the uncertainty associated with estimating markups.