D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

• How Do Central Bank Projections and Forward Guidance Influence Private-Sector Forecasts?

  Staff Working Paper 2018-2 Monica Jain, Christopher S. Sutherland

  We construct a 23-country panel data set to consider the effect of central bank projections and forward guidance on private-sector forecast disagreement. We find that central bank projections and forward guidance matter mainly for private-sector forecast disagreement surrounding upcoming policy rate decisions and matter less for private-sector macroeconomic forecasts.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Inflation targets, Monetary policy, Monetary policy communications, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): D, D8, D83, E, E3, E37, E5, E52, E58

• Competing Currencies in the Laboratory

  Staff Working Paper 2017-53 Janet Hua Jiang, Cathy Zhang

  We investigate competition between two intrinsically worthless currencies as a result of decentralized interactions between human subjects. We design a laboratory experiment based on a simple two-country, two-currency search model to study factors that affect circulation patterns and equilibrium selection.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Digital currencies and fintech JEL Code(s): C, C9, C92, D, D8, D83, E, E4, E40

• On the Tail Risk Premium in the Oil Market

  Staff Working Paper 2017-46 Reinhard Ellwanger

  This paper shows that changes in market participants’ fear of rare events implied by crude oil options contribute to oil price volatility and oil return predictability. Using 25 years of historical data, we document economically large tail risk premia that vary substantially over time and significantly forecast crude oil futures and spot returns.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, C58, D, D8, D84, E, E4, E44, G, G1, G12, G13, Q, Q4, Q43

• Retrieving Implied Financial Networks from Bank Balance-Sheet and Market Data

  Staff Working Paper 2017-30 Jose Fique

  In complex and interconnected banking systems, counterparty risk does not depend only on the risk of the immediate counterparty but also on the risk of others in the network of exposures.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C6, C63, D, D8, D85, G, G2, G21
• May 11, 2017

  Why Is Global Business Investment So Weak? Some Insights from Advanced Economies

  Bank of Canada Review - Spring 2017 Robert Fay, Justin-Damien Guénette, Martin Leduc, Louis Morel

  Various drivers of business investment can be used to explain the underwhelming performance of investment in advanced economies since the global financial crisis, particularly since 2014. The slow growth in aggregate demand cannot by itself explain the full extent of the recent weakness in investment, which appears to be linked primarily to the collapse of global commodity prices and a rise in economic uncertainty. Looking ahead, business investment growth is likely to remain slower than in the pre-crisis period, largely because of structural factors such as population aging.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Domestic demand and components, Economic models, International topics, Monetary policy and uncertainty, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, D, D2, D24, D8, D80, E, E2, E22, F, F0, F01, G, G3, G31

• Constrained Efficiency with Adverse Selection and Directed Search

  Staff Working Paper 2017-15 Mohammad Davoodalhosseini

  Constrained efficient allocation (CE) is characterized in a model of adverse selection and directed search (Guerrieri, Shimer, and Wright (2010)). CE is defined to be the allocation that maximizes welfare, the ex-ante utility of all agents, subject to the frictions of the environment.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets, Financial system regulation and policies, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, D83, E, E2, E24, G, G1, J, J3, J31, J6, J64

• Information Sharing and Bargaining in Buyer-Seller Networks

  Staff Working Paper 2016-63 Sofia Priazhkina, Frank H. Page

  This paper presents a model of strategic buyer-seller networks with information exchange between sellers. Prior to engaging in bargaining with buyers, sellers can share access to buyers for a negotiated transfer. We study how this information exchange affects overall market prices, volumes and welfare, given different initial market conditions and information sharing rules.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Firm dynamics, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): C, C7, C71, C78, D, D2, D21, D4, D43, D8, D85, L, L1, L13

• 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

• Asset Encumbrance, Bank Funding and Financial Fragility

  Staff Working Paper 2016-16 Kartik Anand, Prasanna Gai, James Chapman, Toni Ahnert

  In this piece we show that a limit on the level of asset encumbrance and minimum capital requirements are effective tools for minimizing the incentive for banks to take excessive risk.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, G, G0, G01, G2, G21, G28

• 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