Staff working papers
Corporate Balance Sheets in Developed Economies: Implications for Investment
In this paper, the authors examine the aggregate national balance-sheets of non-financial corporations in Australia and the G7 countries with a view to assessing both their financial structure and their financial position. More importantly, the authors investigate whether the financial position of non-financial corporations (i.e., debt-to-equity ratio) is material to the economy's investment prospects and whether the importance of this channel differs depending on the structure of corporate financing i.e., bank-based or market-oriented financing structures.Convergence of Government Bond Yields in the Euro Zone: The Role of Policy Harmonization
Since the early 1980s, long-term government bond yields in the euro zone have declined, in line with those in other industrialized countries.Long-Term Determinants of the Personal Savings Rate: Literature Review and Some Empirical Results for Canada
This paper examines the structural determinants of the personal savings rate in Canada over the last 30 years, using cointegration techniques. The main finding is that the real interest rate, expected inflation, the ratio of the all-government fiscal balances to nominal GDP, and the ratio of household net worth to personal disposable income are the most […]Consumer Attitudes, Uncertainty, and Consumer Spending
This study examines the link between consumer expenditures and the Conference Board's Index of Consumer Attitudes, an index highly regarded for some time as a useful leading indicator of consumer expenditures. However, the theory that identifies why it may be useful in an analysis of consumption is less well established. To explore this question, we […]An Econometric Examination of the Trend Unemployment Rate in Canada
This paper attempts to identify the trend unemployment rate, an empirical concept, using cointegration theory. The authors examine whether there is a cointegrating relationship between the observed unemployment rate and various structural factors, focussing neither on the non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) nor on the natural rate of unemployment, but rather on the trend unemployment rate, which they define in terms of cointegration.Technical reports
A Comparison of Twelve Macroeconomic Models of the Canadian Economy
In this report, the authors examine and compare twelve private and public sector models of the Canadian economy with respect to their paradigm, structure, and dynamic properties. These open-economy models can be grouped into two economic paradigms.The Performance and Robustness of Simple Monetary Policy Rules in Models of the Canadian Economy
In this report, we evaluate several simple monetary policy rules in twelve private and public sector models of the Canadian economy. Our results indicate that none of the simple policy rules we examined is robust to model uncertainty, in that no single rule performs well in all models.Bank publications
Bank of Canada Review articles
August 18, 2002