Staff working papers

• High-Frequency Trading and Institutional Trading Costs

  Staff Working Paper 2018-8 Marie Chen, Corey Garriott

  Using data on Canadian bond futures, we examine how high-frequency traders (HFTs) interact with institutions building large positions. In contrast to recent findings, we find HFTs in the data act as small-sized liquidity suppliers, and we reject the hypothesis that they engage in back running, a predatory trading strategy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Financial system regulation and policies, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): G, G1, G14, G2, G20, L, L1, L10

• Adverse Selection with Heterogeneously Informed Agents

  Staff Working Paper 2018-7 Mohammad Davoodalhosseini

  A model of over-the-counter markets is proposed. Some asset buyers are informed in that they can identify high quality assets. Heterogeneous sellers with private information choose what type of buyers they want to trade with.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D4, D40, D8, D82, D83, G, G0, G01, G1, G10, G2, G20

• Home Equity Extraction and the Boom-Bust Cycle in Consumption and Residential Investment

  Staff Working Paper 2018-6 Xiaoqing Zhou

  The consumption boom-bust cycle in the 2000s coincided with large fluctuations in the volume of home equity borrowing. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I show that homeowners largely borrowed for residential investment and not consumption.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Economic models, Housing JEL Code(s): D, D1, E, E2, E3

• What Drives Interbank Loans? Evidence from Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2018-5 Narayan Bulusu, Pierre Guérin

  We identify the drivers of unsecured and collateralized loan volumes, rates and haircuts in Canada using the Bayesian model averaging approach to deal with model uncertainty. Our results suggest that the key friction driving behaviour in this market is the collateral reallocation cost faced by borrowers.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Wholesale funding JEL Code(s): C, C5, C55, E, E4, E43, G, G2, G23

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Which Model to Forecast the Target Rate?

  Staff Working Paper 2017-60 Bruno Feunou, Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Jianjian Jin

  Specifications of the Federal Reserve target rate that have more realistic features mitigate in-sample over-fitting and are favored in the data.

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