E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

• Predicting Financial Stress Events: A Signal Extraction Approach

  Staff Working Paper 2014-37 Ian Christensen, Fuchun Li

  The objective of this paper is to propose an early warning system that can predict the likelihood of the occurrence of financial stress events within a given period of time. To achieve this goal, the signal extraction approach proposed by Kaminsky, Lizondo and Reinhart (1998) is used to monitor the evolution of a number of economic indicators that tend to exhibit an unusual behaviour in the periods preceding a financial stress event.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C1, C14, C4, E, E3, E37, E4, E47, F, F3, F36, F37, G, G0, G01, G1, G17

• Global Inflation Dynamics in the Post-Crisis Period: What Explains the Twin Puzzle?

  Staff Working Paper 2014-36 Christian Friedrich

  Inflation dynamics in advanced countries have produced two consecutive puzzles during the years after the global financial crisis. The first puzzle emerged when inflation rates over the period 2009-11 were consistently higher than expected, although economic slack in advanced countries reached its highest level in recent history.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy, Inflation and prices, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, F, F4, F41

• Housework and Fiscal Expansions

  Staff Working Paper 2014-34 Stefano Gnocchi, Daniela Hauser, Evi Pappa

  We build an otherwise-standard business cycle model with housework, calibrated consistently with data on time use, in order to discipline consumption-hours complementarity and relate its strength to the size of fiscal multipliers.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Fiscal policy JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E3, E32, E5, E52, E6, E62

• Commodity Price Co-Movement and Global Economic Activity

  Staff Working Paper 2014-32 Ron Alquist, Olivier Coibion

  Guided by a macroeconomic model in which non-energy commodity prices are endogenously determined, we apply a new factor-based identification strategy to decompose the historical sources of changes in commodity prices and global economic activity.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, F, F4

• Analyzing and Forecasting the Canadian Economy through the LENS Model

  Technical Report No. 102 Olivier Gervais, Marc-André Gosselin

  The authors describe the key features of a new large-scale Canadian macroeconomic forecasting model developed over the past two years at the Bank of Canada.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E1, E17, E2, E27, E3, E37, F, F1, F17

• Forecasting Short-Term Real GDP Growth in the Euro Area and Japan Using Unrestricted MIDAS Regressions

  Staff Discussion Paper 2014-3 Maxime Leboeuf, Louis Morel

  In this paper, the authors develop a new tool to improve the short-term forecasting of real GDP growth in the euro area and Japan. This new tool, which uses unrestricted mixed-data sampling (U-MIDAS) regressions, allows an evaluation of the usefulness of a wide range of indicators in predicting short-term real GDP growth.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C50, C53, E, E3, E37, E4, E47

• Consumer Attitudes and the Epidemiology of Inflation Expectations

  Staff Working Paper 2014-28 Michael Ehrmann, Damjan Pfajfar, Emiliano Santoro

  This paper studies the formation of consumers’ inflation expectations using micro-level data from the Michigan Survey. It shows that beyond the well-established socio-economic determinants of inflation expectations such as gender, income or education, other characteristics such as the households’ financial situation and their purchasing attitudes also matter.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, D, D8, D84, E, E3, E31

• Monetary Policy Transmission during Financial Crises: An Empirical Analysis

  Staff Working Paper 2014-21 Tatjana Dahlhaus

  This paper studies the effects of a monetary policy expansion in the United States during times of high financial stress. The analysis is carried out by introducing a smooth transition factor model where the transition between states (“normal” and high financial stress) depends on a financial conditions index.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): C, C1, C11, C3, C32, E, E3, E32, E4, E44, G, G0, G01
• May 13, 2014

  The Art and Science of Forecasting the Real Price of Oil

  Bank of Canada Review - Spring 2014 Christiane Baumeister

  Forecasts of the price of crude oil play a significant role in the conduct of monetary policy, especially for commodity producers such as Canada. This article presents a range of recently developed forecasting models that, when pooled together, can generate, on average, more accurate forecasts of the price of oil than the oil futures curve. It also illustrates how policy-makers can evaluate the risks associated with the baseline oil price forecast and how they can determine the causes of past oil price fluctuations.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E3, E32, Q, Q4, Q43

• Labor Market Participation, Unemployment and Monetary Policy

  Staff Working Paper 2014-9 Alessia Campolmi, Stefano Gnocchi

  We incorporate a participation decision in a standard New Keynesian model with matching frictions and show that treating the labor force as constant leads to incorrect evaluation of alternative policies.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Labour markets, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E3, E32, E5, E52