C52 - Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection

• Seasonal Adjustment of Weekly Data

  Staff Discussion Paper 2024-17 Jeffrey Mollins, Rachit Lumb

  The industry standard for seasonally adjusting data, X-13ARIMA-SEATS, is not suitable for high-frequency data. We summarize and assess several of the most popular seasonal adjustment methods for weekly data given the increased availability and promise of non-traditional data at higher frequencies.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C1, C4, C5, C52, C8, E, E0, E01, E2, E21

• A Blueprint for the Fourth Generation of Bank of Canada Projection and Policy Analysis Models

  Staff Discussion Paper 2023-23 Donald Coletti

  The fourth generation of Bank of Canada projection and policy analysis models seeks to improve our understanding of inflation dynamics, the supply side of the economy and the underlying risks faced by policy-makers coming from uncertainty about how the economy functions.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Economic models, Inflation and prices, Labour markets, Monetary policy and uncertainty JEL Code(s): C, C5, C50, C51, C52, C53, C54, C55

• Combining Large Numbers of Density Predictions with Bayesian Predictive Synthesis

  Staff Working Paper 2023-45 Tony Chernis

  I show how to combine large numbers of forecasts using several approaches within the framework of a Bayesian predictive synthesis. I find techniques that choose and combine a handful of forecasts, known as global-local shrinkage priors, perform best.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C1, C11, C5, C52, C53, E, E3, E37

• Forecasting Banks’ Corporate Loan Losses Under Stress: A New Corporate Default Model

  Technical Report No. 122 Gabriel Bruneau, Thibaut Duprey, Ruben Hipp

  We present a new corporate default model, one of the building blocks of the Bank of Canada’s bank stress-testing infrastructure. The model is used to forecast corporate loan losses of the Canadian banking sector under stress.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Economic models, Financial institutions, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, C5, C52, C53, G, G1, G17, G2, G21, G28

• Calculating Effective Degrees of Freedom for Forecast Combinations and Ensemble Models

  Staff Discussion Paper 2022-19 James Younker

  This paper derives a calculation for the effective degrees of freedom of a forecast combination under a set of general conditions for linear models. Computing effective degrees of freedom shows that the complexity cost of a forecast combination is driven by the parameters in the weighting scheme and the weighted average of parameters in the auxiliary models.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C0, C01, C02, C1, C13, C5, C50, C51, C52, C53

• Nowcasting Canadian GDP with Density Combinations

  Staff Discussion Paper 2022-12 Tony Chernis, Taylor Webley

  We present a tool for creating density nowcasts for Canadian real GDP growth. We demonstrate that the combined densities are a reliable and accurate tool for assessing the state of the economy and risks to the outlook.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, C53, E, E3, E7

• Estimating Large-Dimensional Connectedness Tables: The Great Moderation Through the Lens of Sectoral Spillovers

  Staff Working Paper 2021-37 Felix Brunner, Ruben Hipp

  Understanding the size of sectoral links is crucial to predicting the impact of a crisis on the whole economy. We show that statistical learning techniques substantially outperform traditional estimation techniques when measuring large networks of these links.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, C5, C52, E, E2, E23, E27

• Survival Analysis of Bank Note Circulation: Fitness, Network Structure and Machine Learning

  Staff Working Paper 2020-33 Diego Rojas, Juan Estrada, Kim Huynh, David T. Jacho-Chávez

  Using the Bank of Canada's Currency Information Management Strategy, we analyze the network structure traced by a bank note’s travel in circulation and find that the denomination of the bank note is important in our potential understanding of the demand and use of cash.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Econometric and statistical methods, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, C6, C65, C8, C81, E, E4, E42, E5, E51

• The Trend Unemployment Rate in Canada: Searching for the Unobservable

  Staff Working Paper 2019-13 Dany Brouillette, Marie-Noëlle Robitaille, Laurence Savoie-Chabot, Pierre St-Amant, Bassirou Gueye, Elise Nelson

  In this paper, we assess several methods that have been used to measure the Canadian trend unemployment rate (TUR). We also consider improvements and extensions to some existing methods.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Inflation and prices, Labour markets JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, C53, E, E2, E24, E27

• Characterizing the Canadian Financial Cycle with Frequency Filtering Approaches

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-34 Andrew Lee-Poy

  In this note, I use two multivariate frequency filtering approaches to characterize the Canadian financial cycle by capturing fluctuations in the underlying variables with respect to a long-term trend. The first approach is a dynamically weighted composite, and the second is a stochastic cycle model.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability, Monetary and financial indicators, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): C, C0, C01, C1, C13, C14, C18, C3, C32, C5, C51, C52, E, E3, E32, E6, E66, G, G0, G01, G1, G18