Staff research

• Food Aid Delivery, Food Security and Aggregate Welfare in a Small Open Economy: Theory and Evidence

  Staff Working Paper 1998-1 Patrick Osakwe

  A small-open-economy model is developed to examine how the method of food aid disbursement affects labor employment, food security and aggregate welfare, in recipient countries, in an environment in which private sector firms pay efficiency wages to induce effort. Two forms of food aid delivery are considered: first is project food aid, under which food […]

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Development economics JEL Code(s): J, J4, O, O1, Q, Q1

• Constraints on the Conduct of Canadian Monetary Policy in the 1990s: Dealing with Uncertainty in Financial Markets

  Technical Report No. 80 Kevin Clinton, Mark Zelmer

  Canada's economic performance in the first half of the 1990s was adversely affected by high premiums in interest rates that were brought on by political and economic uncertainties.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Monetary policy and uncertainty, Monetary policy implementation, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E5, E58

• Modelling the Behaviour of U.S. Inventories: A Cointegration-Euler Approach

  Staff Working Paper 1997-19 Iris Claus

  Cyclical contractions are often referred to as inventory cycles, in part because movements in inventories can amplify cyclical fluctuations in output. An unanticipated slowing in demand generally leads to an unintended buildup of inventories: only with a lag do firms adjust production and their actual holding of inventories relative to the desired level.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International topics JEL Code(s): E, E2, E22

• A Measure of Underlying Inflation in the United States

  Staff Working Paper 1997-20 Iris Claus

  A monetary authority with the primary objective of price stability has to distinguish between temporary price shocks and persistent shocks to the rate of inflation. A measure of underlying inflation, therefore, has an important role to play as a guideline for monetary policy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31

• Les marchés du travail régionaux : une comparaison entre le Canada et les États-Unis

  Staff Working Paper 1997-17 Mario Lefebvre

  The purpose of this study is to compare the behaviour of regional labour markets in Canada and the United States. The study shows that the degree of persistence of unemployment is significantly higher in the provinces of Canada than it is in the various American regions.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24

• Measurement of the Output Gap: A Discussion of Recent Research at the Bank of Canada

  Technical Report No. 79 Pierre St-Amant, Simon van Norden

  In this paper, we discuss some methodologies for estimating potential output and the output gap that have recently been studied at the Bank of Canada. The assumptions and econometric techniques used by the different methodologies are discussed in turn, and applications to Canadian data are presented.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Potential output JEL Code(s): D, D2, D24

• Canadian Short-Term Interest Rates and the BAX Futures Market: Analysis of the Impact of Volatility on Hedging Activity and the Correlation of Returns between Markets

  Staff Working Paper 1997-18 David Watt

  This paper analyses how Canadian financial firms manage short-term interest rate risk through the use of BAX futures contracts. The results show that the most effective hedging strategy is, on average, a static strategy based on linear regression that assumes constant variances, even though dynamic models allowing for time-varying variances are found to have superior explanatory power.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Interest rates JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43

• Canadian Policy Analysis Model: CPAM

  Staff Working Paper 1997-16 Richard Black, David Rose

  This paper documents the structure and properties of the Canadian Policy Analysis Model (CPAM). CPAM is designed to provide a reasonably complete representation of the Canadian macro economy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E1, E17

• The Effects of Budget Rules on Fiscal Performance and Macroeconomic Stabilization

  Staff Working Paper 1997-15 Jonathan Millar

  Budget rules can be defined as legislated or constitutional constraints on government deficits, taxes, expenditures, or debt. This paper reviews the budget rules recently legislated in six of Canada's provinces and both of its territories, as well as budget rules in other OECD countries.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy JEL Code(s): E, E6, E62, H, H3, H6, H61

• Menu Costs, Relative Prices, and Inflation: Evidence for Canada

  Staff Working Paper 1997-14 Robert Amano, Tiff Macklem

  The menu-cost models of price adjustment developed by Ball and Mankiw (1994;1995) predict that short-run movements in inflation should be positively related to the skewness and the variance of the distribution of disaggregated relative-price shocks in each period. We test these predictions on Canadian data using the distribution of changes in disaggregated producer prices to measure the skewness and standard deviation of relative-price shocks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, E, E3, E31