C38 - Classification Methods; Cluster Analysis; Factor Models
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Applying the Wage-Common to Canadian Provinces
As at the national level, available sources of hourly wage data for Canadian provinces sometimes send conflicting signals about wage growth. This note has two objectives. First, we develop a common measure of provincial wages (the provincial wage-common) to better capture the underlying wage pressures, reflecting the overall trend across all data sources. -
Can Media and Text Analytics Provide Insights into Labour Market Conditions in China?
The official Chinese labour market indicators have been seen as problematic, given their small cyclical movement and their only-partial capture of the labour force. In our paper, we build a monthly Chinese labour market conditions index (LMCI) using text analytics applied to mainland Chinese-language newspapers over the period from 2003 to 2017. -
Wages: Measurement and Key Drivers
Available sources of hourly wage data in Canada sometimes send conflicting signals about wage growth. This note thus has two objectives: first, we develop a wage measure—the wage-common—to better capture the (underlying) wage pressures reflecting the common trend across the available data sources. Second, we re-examine the relationship between wage growth and macro drivers (labour market slack and labour productivity). -
A Dynamic Factor Model for Nowcasting Canadian GDP Growth
This paper estimates a dynamic factor model (DFM) for nowcasting Canadian gross domestic product. The model is estimated with a mix of soft and hard indicators, and it features a high share of international data. -
The Real-Time Properties of the Bank of Canada’s Staff Output Gap Estimates
We study the revision properties of the Bank of Canada’s staff output gap estimates since the mid-1980s. Our results suggest that the average staff output gap revision has decreased significantly over the past 15 years, in line with recent evidence for the U.S. -
Macroeconomic Uncertainty Through the Lens of Professional Forecasters
We analyze the evolution of macroeconomic uncertainty in the United States, based on the forecast errors of consensus survey forecasts of different economic indicators. Comprehensive information contained in the survey forecasts enables us to capture a real-time subjective measure of uncertainty in a simple framework. -
Improving Overnight Loan Identification in Payments Systems
Information on the allocation and pricing of over-the-counter (OTC) markets is scarce. Furfine (1999) pioneered an algorithm that provides transaction-level data on the OTC interbank lending market. -
High-Frequency Real Economic Activity Indicator for Canada
I construct a weekly measure of real economic activity in Canada. Based on the work of Aruoba et al. (2009), the indicator is extracted as an unobserved component underlying the co-movement of four monthly observed real macroeconomic variables - employment, manufacturing sales, retail sales and GDP.