E32 - Business Fluctuations; Cycles

• Testing for a Structural Break in the Volatility of Real GDP Growth in Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2001-9 Alexandre Debs

  This study tests for a structural break in the volatility of real GDP growth in Canada following the methodology of McConnell and Quiros (1998). A break is found in the first quarter of 1991.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C1, C12, E, E3, E32

• Price Stickiness, Inflation, and Output Dynamics: A Cross-Country Analysis

  Staff Working Paper 2000-12 Hashmat Khan

  The sticky-price model of aggregate fluctuations implies that countries with high trend inflation rates should exhibit less-persistent output fluctuations than countries with low trend inflation.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E32

• The U.S. Capacity Utilization Rate: A New Estimation Approach

  Staff Working Paper 1999-14 René Lalonde

  The recent strengh of the U.S. economy and historically low rates of inflation have sparked considerable debate among economists and Federal Reserve officials. In order to better explain the recent behaviour of inflation, some observers have raised the concept of a non-accelerating inflation capacity utilization rate (NAICU). In this study, the author presents a new […]

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E37

• Dynamic Employment and Hours Effects of Government Spending Shocks

  Staff Working Paper 1999-1 Mingwei Yuan, Wenli Li

  In this paper, we analyze the dynamic behaviour of employment and hours worked per worker in a stochastic general equilibrium model with a matching mechanism between vacancies and unemployed workers. The model is estimated for the United States using the Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) estimation technique. An increase in government spending raises hours worked […]

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E3, E32, E6, E62, J, J6, J64

• Predicting Canadian Recessions Using Financial Variables: A Probit Approach

  Staff Working Paper 1998-5 Joseph Atta-Mensah, Greg Tkacz

  This paper examines the ability of a number of financial variables to predict Canadian recessions. Regarding methodology, we follow closely the technique employed by Estrella and Mishkin (1998), who use a probit model to predict U.S. recessions up to eight quarters in advance. Our main finding is that the spread between the yield on Canadian […]

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Interest rates JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E4, E43

• Do Mechanical Filters Provide a Good Approximation of Business Cycles?

  Technical Report No. 78 Alain Guay, Pierre St-Amant

  In this paper, the authors examine how well the Hodrick-Prescott filter (HP) and the band-pass filter recently proposed by Baxter and King (BK) extract the business-cycle component of macroeconomic time series.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, E, E3, E32

• The Commodity-Price Cycle and Regional Economic Performance in Canada

  Staff Working Paper 1996-12 Mario Lefebvre, Stephen S. Poloz

  This paper attempts to provide one interpretation of the broad regional economic history of Canada since the early 1970s. As the title of the paper suggests, we believe that, to a significant degree, regional diversity in economic performance reflects movements in Canada's terms of trade, which very frequently are tied to developments in world commodity markets.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32