Staff research

• Modeling Fluctuations in the Global Demand for Commodities

  Staff Working Paper 2018-4 Lutz Kilian, Xiaoqing Zhou

  It is widely understood that the real price of globally traded commodities is determined by the forces of demand and supply. One of the main determinants of the real price of commodities is shifts in the demand for commodities associated with unexpected fluctuations in global real economic activity.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): F, F4, F44, Q, Q1, Q11, Q3, Q31, Q4, Q41, Q43

• Wages: Measurement and Key Drivers

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-2 Dany Brouillette, Jonathan Lachaine, Benoit Vincent

  Available sources of hourly wage data in Canada sometimes send conflicting signals about wage growth. This note thus has two objectives: first, we develop a wage measure—the wage-common—to better capture the (underlying) wage pressures reflecting the common trend across the available data sources. Second, we re-examine the relationship between wage growth and macro drivers (labour market slack and labour productivity).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Labour markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): C, C3, C38, J, J3

• Canada’s Experience with Trade Policy

  Staff Discussion Paper 2018-1 Karyne B. Charbonneau, Daniel de Munnik, Laura Murphy

  This paper compiles the contemporary view on three major Canadian-led trade policies that have marked Canada’s economic history since Confederation: the National Policy (1879), the Canada–US Agreement on Automotive Products (Auto Pact, 1965) and the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement (FTA, 1989, including its extension to the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, 1994).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): International topics, Trade integration JEL Code(s): F, F1, F13, N, N7, N71, N72

• Speed Segmentation on Exchanges: Competition for Slow Flow

  Staff Working Paper 2018-3 Lisa Anderson, Emad Andrews, Baiju Devani, Michael Mueller, Adrian Walton

  In 2015, TSX Alpha, a Canadian stock exchange, implemented a speed bump for marketable orders and an inverted fee structure as part of a redesign. We find no evidence that this redesign impacted market-wide measures of trading costs or contributed appreciably to segmenting retail order flow away from other Canadian venues with a maker-taker fee structure.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): G, G1, G14, G2, G24

• How Do Central Bank Projections and Forward Guidance Influence Private-Sector Forecasts?

  Staff Working Paper 2018-2 Monica Jain, Christopher S. Sutherland

  We construct a 23-country panel data set to consider the effect of central bank projections and forward guidance on private-sector forecast disagreement. We find that central bank projections and forward guidance matter mainly for private-sector forecast disagreement surrounding upcoming policy rate decisions and matter less for private-sector macroeconomic forecasts.

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

• Merchant Acceptance of Cash and Credit Cards at the Point of Sale

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-1 Ben Fung, Kim Huynh, Kerry Nield, Angelika Welte

  Recent data show that the use of credit cards in Canada has been increasing, while the use of cash has been declining. At the same time, only two-thirds of small or medium-sized businesses accept credit cards.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital currencies and fintech, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial services JEL Code(s): C, C2, D, D1, E, E4, E41

• Capital-Goods Imports and US Growth

  Staff Working Paper 2018-1 Michele Cavallo, Anthony Landry

  Capital-goods imports have become an increasing source of growth for the U.S. economy. To understand this phenomenon, we build a neoclassical growth model with international trade in capital goods in which agents face exogenous paths of total factor and investment-specific productivity measures.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Productivity, Trade integration JEL Code(s): E, E2, F, F2, F4, O, O3, O4
• December 31, 2017

  Research Update - December 2017

  This monthly newsletter features the latest research publications by Bank of Canada economists including external publications and working papers published on the Bank of Canada’s website.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Research newsletters

• The Impacts of Minimum Wage Increases on the Canadian Economy

  Staff Analytical Note 2017-26 Dany Brouillette, Daniel Gao, Olivier Gervais, Calista Cheung

  This note reviews the channels through which scheduled minimum wage increases over the coming years may affect Canadian economic activity and inflation and assesses their macroeconomic impacts. From reduced-form estimates of direct minimum wage pass-through, we find that consumer price index (CPI) inflation could be boosted by about 0.1 percentage point (pp) on average in 2018.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Labour markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, J, J2, J21, J22, J23

• The Evolution of Unobserved Skill Returns in the U.S.: A New Approach Using Panel Data

  Staff Working Paper 2017-61 Lance Lochner, Youngmin Park, Youngki Shin

  Economists disagree about the factors driving the substantial increase in residual wage inequality in the United States over the past few decades. To identify changes in the returns to unobserved skills, we make a novel assumption about the dynamics of skills (especially among older workers) rather than about the stability of skill distributions across cohorts, as is standard.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Labour markets JEL Code(s): C, C2, C23, J, J2, J24, J3, J31