Staff working papers
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Agency Costs, Risk Shocks and International Cycles
We add agency costs as in Carlstrom and Fuerst (1997) into a two-country, two-good international business-cycle model. In our model, changes in the relative price of investment arise endogenously. -
Reconciling the Differences in Aggregate U.S. Wage Series
Average hourly real wage series from the Labor Productivity and Costs (LPC) program and the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program have evolved very differently over the past decades. -
Debt Overhang and Deleveraging in the US Household Sector: Gauging the Impact on Consumption
Using a novel dataset for the US states, this paper examines whether household debt and the protracted debt deleveraging help explain the dismal performance of US consumption since 2007, in the aftermath of the housing bubble. -
Tractable Term Structure Models
We introduce a new framework that facilitates term structure modeling with both positive interest rates and flexible time-series dynamics but that is also tractable, meaning amenable to quick and robust estimation. -
Exchange Rate Fluctuations and Labour Market Adjustments in Canadian Manufacturing Industries
We estimate the link between exchange rate fluctuations and the labour input of Canadian manufacturing industries. The analysis is based on a dynamic model of labour demand, and the econometric strategy employs a panel two-step approach for cointegrating regressions. -
Emergency Liquidity Facilities, Signalling and Funding Costs
In the months preceding the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, banks were willing to pay a premium over the Federal Reserve’s discount window (DW) rate to participate in the much less flexible Term Auction Facility (TAF). We empirically test the predictions of a new signalling model that offers a rationale for offering two different liquidity facilities. -
On the Essentiality of E-Money
Recent years have witnessed the advances of e-money systems such as Bitcoin, PayPal and various forms of stored-value cards. This paper adopts a mechanism design approach to identify some essential features of different payment systems that implement and improve the constrained optimal resource allocation. -
Speculators, Prices and Market Volatility
We analyze data from 2005 through 2009 that uniquely identify categories of traders to assess how speculators such as hedge funds and swap dealers relate to volatility and price changes. Examining various subperiods where price trends are strong, we find little evidence that speculators destabilize financial markets. -
Monetary Policy and Financial Stability: Cross-Country Evidence
Central banks may face challenges in achieving their price stability goals when financial stability risks are present. There is, however, considerable heterogeneity among central banks with respect to how they manage these potential trade-offs.