Staff working papers

• Inflation and the Tax System in Canada: An Exploratory Partial-Equilibrium Analysis

  Staff Working Paper 2000-18 Brian O'Reilly, Mylène Levac

  This paper reports on an exploratory application to Canadian data of an approach pioneered by Martin Feldstein (1997, 1999). Feldstein finds that even at low inflation rates there are costs arising from the distortions introduced by the interaction of inflation with the taxation of income from capital (capital gains, dividends, and interest) in a less-than-perfectly-indexed tax system.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation: costs and benefits JEL Code(s): E, E5, E6

• A Practical Guide to Swap Curve Construction

  Staff Working Paper 2000-17 Uri Ron

  The swap market has enjoyed tremendous growth in the last decade. With government issues shrinking in supply and increased price volatilities, the swap term structure has emerged as an alternative pricing, benchmark, and hedging mechanism to the government term structure.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, International financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G15

• Volatility Transmission Between Foreign Exchange and Money Markets

  Staff Working Paper 2000-16 Shafiq K. Ebrahim

  This paper uses trivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models to study price and volatility spillovers between the foreign exchange and associated money markets. Three models are estimated using data on U.S. dollar/Canadian dollar, U.S. dollar/Deutsche mark, and U.S. dollar/Japanese yen daily exchange rate returns together with returns on 90-day Eurodollar, Euro Canada, Euromark, and Euroyen deposits.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G15

• Private Capital Flows, Financial Development, and Economic Growth in Developing Countries

  Staff Working Paper 2000-15 Jeannine Bailliu

  An important issue in the debate over the desirability of freer capital mobility for developing countries is whether capital flows have significant effects on economic growth. Proponents of capital account liberalization cite the growth-promoting attributes of capital inflows as a key benefit of financial integration for developing countries.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International topics JEL Code(s): F, F2, F21, F4, F43, O, O5, O50

• Employment Effects Of Nominal-Wage Rigidity: An Examination Using Wage-Settlements Data

  Staff Working Paper 2000-14 Umar Faruqui

  The argument advocating a moderate level of inflation based on the downward nominal-wage rigidity (DNWR) hypothesis rests on three factors: its presence, extent, and negative impact in the labour market. This paper focuses on the employment effect of DNWR.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets JEL Code(s): C, C2, C23, J, J2, J23, J3, J30

• Price Stickiness, Inflation, and Output Dynamics: A Cross-Country Analysis

  Staff Working Paper 2000-12 Hashmat Khan

  The sticky-price model of aggregate fluctuations implies that countries with high trend inflation rates should exhibit less-persistent output fluctuations than countries with low trend inflation.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E32

• Fractional Cointegration and the Demand for M1

  Staff Working Paper 2000-13 Greg Tkacz

  Using wavelets, the author estimates the fractional order of integration of a common long-run money-demand relationship whose parameters are obtained from a full-information maximum-likelihood procedure.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Monetary aggregates JEL Code(s): C, C1, C13, E, E4, E41

• Identifying Policy-makers' Objectives: An Application to the Bank of Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2000-11 Nicholas Rowe, James Yetman

  In this paper, we develop a new way to test hypotheses about policy-makers' targets, and we implement that test for Canadian monetary policy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation targets JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E6, E61

• Probing Potential Output: Monetary Policy, Credibility, and Optimal Learning under Uncertainty

  Staff Working Paper 2000-10 James Yetman

  The effective conduct of monetary policy is complicated by uncertainty about the level of potential output, and thus about the size of the monetary policy response that would be sufficient to achieve the targeted inflation rate. One possible response to such uncertainty is for the monetary authority to "probe," interpreted here as actively using its policy response to learn about the level of potential output.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credibility, Monetary policy and uncertainty, Potential output JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E58

• Modelling Risk Premiums in Equity and Foreign Exchange Markets

  Staff Working Paper 2000-9 René Garcia, Maral Kichian

  The observed predictability of excess returns in equity and foreign exchange markets has largely been attributed to the presence of time-varying risk premiums in these markets. For example, excess equity returns were found to be explained by various financial and economic variables.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, F, F3, F31, G, G1, G12, G15