Staff working papers

• Information Shocks, Jumps, and Price Discovery - Evidence from the U.S. Treasury Market

  Staff Working Paper 2008-22 George Jiang, Ingrid Lo, Adrien Verdelhan

  We examine large price changes, known as jumps, in the U.S. Treasury market. Using recently developed statistical tools, we identify price jumps in the 2-, 3-, 5-, 10-year notes and 30-year bond during the period of 2005-2006.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G14

• The Cost of Equity in Canada: An International Comparison

  Staff Working Paper 2008-21 Jonathan Witmer

  This paper calculates an implied cost of equity for 19 developed countries from 1991 to 2006. During this period, there has been a decline in the cost of equity of about 10-15 bps per year, which can be partially attributed to declining government yields and declining inflation.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, International topics JEL Code(s): G, G3, G30, G38

• The Effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on CEO Pay for Luck

  Staff Working Paper 2008-20 Teodora Paligorova

  According to the rent-extraction hypothesis, weak corporate governance allows entrenched CEOs to capture the pay-setting process and benefit from events outside of their control – get paid for luck.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets JEL Code(s): G, G3, G38, J, J3, J33, M, M5, M52

• Inflation, Nominal Portfolios, and Wealth Redistribution in Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2008-19 Césaire Meh, Yaz Terajima

  There is currently a policy debate on potential refinements to monetary policy regimes in countries with low and stable inflation such as the U.S. and Canada. For example, in Canada, a systematic review of the current inflation targeting framework is underway.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Inflation targets, Inflation: costs and benefits, Monetary policy framework, Sectoral balance sheet JEL Code(s): D, D3, D31, D5, D58, E, E3, E31, E5, E50

• Empirical Likelihood Block Bootstrapping

  Staff Working Paper 2008-18 Jason Allen, Allan Gregory, Katsumi Shimotsu

  Monte Carlo evidence has made it clear that asymptotic tests based on generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation have disappointing size. The problem is exacerbated when the moment conditions are serially correlated.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C1, C14, C2, C22

• Policy Coordination in an International Payment System

  Staff Working Paper 2008-17 James Chapman

  Given the increasing interdependence of both financial systems and attendant payment and settlement systems a vital question is what form should optimal policy take when there are two connected payment systems with separate regulators.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rate regimes, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): E, E4, E42, E5, E58, F, F3, F31, F33

• On Portfolio Separation Theorems with Heterogeneous Beliefs and Attitudes towards Risk

  Staff Working Paper 2008-16 Fousseni Chabi-Yo, Eric Ghysels, Eric Renault

  The early work of Tobin (1958) showed that portfolio allocation decisions can be reduced to a two stage process: first decide the relative allocation of assets across the risky assets, and second decide how to divide total wealth between the risky assets and the safe asset. This so called twofund separation relies on special assumptions on either returns or preferences.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, D, D5, D58, G, G1, G11, G12

• Price Level versus Inflation Targeting under Model Uncertainty

  Staff Working Paper 2008-15 Gino Cateau

  The purpose of this paper is to make a quantitative contribution to the inflation versus price level targeting debate. It considers a policy-maker that can set policy either through an inflation targeting rule or a price level targeting rule to minimize a quadratic loss function using the actual projection model of the Bank of Canada (ToTEM).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary policy and uncertainty JEL Code(s): D, D8, D81, E, E5, E58

• Driving Forces of the Canadian Economy: An Accounting Exercise

  Staff Working Paper 2008-14 Simona Cociuba, Alexander Ueberfeldt

  This paper analyses the Canadian economy for the post 1960 period. It uses an accounting procedure developed in Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan (2006). The procedure identifies accounting factors that help align the predictions of the neoclassical growth model with macroeconomic variables observed in the data.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E6, E65, O, O4, O41, O5, O51

• Uncertainty, Inflation, and Welfare

  Staff Working Paper 2008-13 Jonathan Chiu, Miguel Molico

  This paper studies the welfare costs and the redistributive effects of inflation in the presence of idiosyncratic liquidity risk, in a micro-founded search-theoretical monetary model. We calibrate the model to match the empirical aggregate money demand and the distribution of money holdings across households, and study the effects of inflation under the implied degree of market incompleteness.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation: costs and benefits, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E4, E40, E5, E50