Staff working papers

• Measuring Interest Rate Expectations in Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2003-26 Grahame Johnson

  Financial market expectations regarding future policy actions by the Bank of Canada are an important input into the Bank's decision-making process, and they can be measured using a variety of sources. The author develops a simple expectations-based model to focus on measuring interest rate expectations that are implied by the current level of money market yields.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Interest rates JEL Code(s): G, G1

• Income Trusts - Understanding the Issues

  Staff Working Paper 2003-25 Michael R. King

  An income trust is an investment vehicle that distributes cash generated by a set of operating assets in a tax-efficient manner. The market capitalization of income trusts has grown rapidly over the past two years, reaching $45 billion at year-end 2002.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G3

• Forecasting and Analyzing World Commodity Prices

  Staff Working Paper 2003-24 René Lalonde, Zhenhua Zhu, Frédérick Demers

  The authors develop simple econometric models to analyze and forecast two components of the Bank of Canada commodity price index: the Bank of Canada non-energy (BCNE) commodity prices and the West Texas Intermediate crude oil price. They present different methodologies to identify transitory and permanent components of movements in these prices.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C5

• What Does the Risk-Appetite Index Measure?

  Staff Working Paper 2003-23 Miroslav Misina

  Explanations of changes in asset prices as being due to exogenous changes in risk appetite, although arguably controversial, have been popular in the financial community and have also received some attention in attempts to account for recent financial crises. Operational versions of these explanations are based on the assumption that changes in asset prices can be decomposed into a part that can be attributed to changes in riskiness and a part attributable to changes in risk aversion, and that some quantitative measure can capture these effects in isolation.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12

• The Construction of Continuity-Adjusted Monetary Aggregate Components

  Staff Working Paper 2003-22 Jeannie Kottaras

  Changes in the financial industry result in new data that are inconsistent with the former presentation, and therefore adjustments are required to "adjust" or smooth out these breaks to establish continuity.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary aggregates JEL Code(s): E, E5, E51

• Dynamic Factor Analysis for Measuring Money

  Staff Working Paper 2003-21 Paul Gilbert, Lise Pichette

  Technological innovations in the financial industry pose major problems for the measurement of monetary aggregates. The authors describe work on a new measure of money that has a more satisfactory means of identifying and removing the effects of financial innovations.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Monetary aggregates, Monetary and financial indicators JEL Code(s): C, C4, C43, C8, C82, E, E5, E51

• The U.S. Stock Market and Fundamentals: A Historical Decomposition

  Staff Working Paper 2003-20 David Dupuis, David Tessier

  The authors identify the fundamentals behind the dynamics of the U.S. stock market over the past 30 years. They specify a structural vector-error-correction model following the methodology of King, Plosser, Stock, and Watson (1991).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1

• A Small Dynamic Hybrid Model for the Euro Area

  Staff Working Paper 2003-19 Ramdane Djoudad, Céline Gauthier

  The authors estimate and solve a small structural model for the euro area over the 1983–2000 period. Given the assumption of rational expectations, the model implies a set of orthogonality conditions that provide the basis for estimating the model's parameter by generalized method of moments.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31

• Technological Change and the Education Premium in Canada: Sectoral Evidence

  Staff Working Paper 2003-18 Jean Farès, Terence Yuen

  It has been well documented that the education premium measured by the wage difference between university and high school graduates has remained constant over the past two decades in Canada. Despite this stable pattern at the aggregate level, skill-biased technology could have important implications for the inter-industry wage structure.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets JEL Code(s): J, J3, J31, O, O3, O30

• Explaining and Forecasting Inflation in Emerging Markets: The Case of Mexico

  Staff Working Paper 2003-17 Jeannine Bailliu, Daniel Garcés, Mark Kruger, Miguel Messmacher

  The authors apply existing inflation models that have worked well in industrialized countries to Mexico, an emerging market that has recently moved to adopt an inflation-targeting framework for monetary policy. They compare the performance of these models with a mark-up model that has been used extensively to analyze inflation in Mexico.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E37