C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods

• A General Approach to Recovering Market Expectations from Futures Prices with an Application to Crude Oil

  Staff Working Paper 2016-18 Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian

  Futures markets are a potentially valuable source of information about price expectations. Exploiting this information has proved difficult in practice, because time-varying risk premia often render the futures price a poor measure of the market expectation of the price of the underlying asset.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, D, D8, D84, G, G1, G14, Q, Q4, Q43

• Dating Systemic Financial Stress Episodes in the EU Countries

  Staff Working Paper 2016-11 Benjamin Klaus, Tuomas Peltonen, Thibaut Duprey

  This paper introduces a new methodology to date systemic financial stress events in a transparent, objective and reproducible way. The financial cycle is captured by a monthly country-specific financial stress index.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Central bank research, Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models, Financial markets, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies, Monetary and financial indicators JEL Code(s): C, C5, C54, G, G0, G01, G1, G15

• Measuring Systemic Risk Across Financial Market Infrastructures

  Staff Working Paper 2016-10 Fuchun Li, Héctor Pérez Saiz

  We measure systemic risk in the network of financial market infrastructures (FMIs) as the probability that two or more FMIs have a large credit risk exposure to the same FMI participant.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C5, C58, G, G2, G21, G23

• Understanding Firms’ Inflation Expectations Using the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey

  Staff Working Paper 2016-7 Simon Richards, Matthieu Verstraete

  Inflation expectations are a key determinant of actual and future inflation and thus matter for the conduct of monetary policy. We study how firms form their inflation expectations using quarterly firm-level data from the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey, spanning the 2001 to 2015 period.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Credibility, Econometric and statistical methods, Firm dynamics, Inflation and prices, Inflation targets, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): C, C1, C2, C25, D, D2, D21, D8, D84, E, E3, E31, E5, E52, E58

• Macroeconomic Uncertainty Through the Lens of Professional Forecasters

  Staff Working Paper 2016-5 Soojin Jo, Rodrigo Sekkel

  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.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C38, E, E1, E17, E3, E32

• What Is Behind the Weakness in Global Investment?

  Staff Discussion Paper 2016-5 Maxime Leboeuf, Robert Fay

  The recovery in private business investment globally remains extremely weak more than seven years after the financial crisis. This paper contributes to the ongoing policy debate on the factors behind this weakness by analyzing the role of growth prospects and uncertainty in explaining developments in non-residential private business investment in large advanced economies since the crisis.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Central bank research, Domestic demand and components, Economic models, International topics, Monetary policy and uncertainty, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): C, C2, C23, C3, C33, D, D2, D24, D8, D80, D84, E, E2, E22, F, F0, F01, G, G3, G31

• New Housing Registrations as a Leading Indicator of the BC Economy

  Staff Discussion Paper 2016-3 Calista Cheung, Dmitry Granovsky

  Housing starts and building permits data are commonly used as leading indicators of economic activity. In British Columbia, all new homes must be registered with the Homeowner Protection Office, a branch of BC Housing, before the issuance of building permits and the start of construction.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Housing, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): C, C1, C13, C5, C53, E, E3, E32, E37

• Debt Overhang and Deleveraging in the US Household Sector: Gauging the Impact on Consumption

  Staff Working Paper 2015-47 Bruno Albuquerque, Georgi Krustev

  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.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C1, C13, C2, C23, C5, C52, D, D1, D12, H, H3, H31

• Speculators, Prices and Market Volatility

  Staff Working Paper 2015-42 Celso Brunetti, Bahattin Buyuksahin, Jeffrey H. Harris

  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.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International topics, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): C, C3, G, G1

• Nowcasting BRIC+M in Real Time

  Staff Working Paper 2015-38 Tatjana Dahlhaus, Justin-Damien Guénette, Garima Vasishtha

  Emerging-market economies have become increasingly important in driving global GDP growth over the past 10 to 15 years. This has made timely and accurate assessment of current and future economic activity in emerging markets important for policy-makers not only in these countries but also in advanced economies.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C3, C33, C5, C53, E, E3, E37