E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
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Banks, Credit Market Frictions, and Business Cycles
The author proposes a micro-founded framework that incorporates an active banking sector into a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with a financial accelerator. -
Nowcasting the Global Economy
Forecasts of global economic activity and inflation are important inputs when conducting monetary policy in small open economies such as Canada. As part of the Bank of Canada's broad agenda to augment its short-term forecasting tools, the author constructs simple mixed-frequency forecasting equations for quarterly global output, imports, and inflation using the monthly global Purchasing Managers Index (PMI). -
Inventories in ToTEM
ToTEM – the Bank of Canada’s principal projection and policy-analysis model for the Canadian economy – is extended to include inventories. In the model, firms accumulate inventories of finished goods for their role in facilitating the demand for goods. -
Inventories, Stockouts, and ToTEM
Inventory investment is an important component of the Canadian business cycle. Despite its small average size – less than 1 per cent of output – it exhibits volatile procyclical fluctuations, accounting for almost one-third of output variance. -
The Transmission of Shocks to the Chinese Economy in a Global Context: A Model-Based Approach
To better understand the dynamics of the Chinese economy and its interaction with the global economy, the authors incorporate China into an existing model for the G-3 economies (i.e., the United States, the euro area, and Japan), paying particular attention to modelling the exchange rate and monetary policy in China. -
The Fisher BCPI: The Bank of Canada’s New Commodity Price Index
The prices of commodities produced in Canada have important implications for the performance of the Canadian economy and the conduct of monetary policy. The authors explain an important change to the methodology used to construct the Bank of Canada commodity price index (BCPI). -
Le pouvoir de prévision des indices PMI
The forecast of world economic growth plays a key role in the conduct of Canadian monetary policy. In this context, the authors study the usefulness of the monthly Purchasing Managers’ Indexes (PMIs) in predicting short-term real GDP growth in the euro area, Japan, the United Kingdom, and China, as well as in the world economy. -
On the Advantages of Disaggregated Data: Insights from Forecasting the U.S. Economy in a Data-Rich Environment
The good forecasting performance of factor models has been well documented in the literature. While many studies focus on a very limited set of variables (typically GDP and inflation), this study evaluates forecasting performance at disaggregated levels to examine the source of the improved forecasting accuracy, relative to a simple autoregressive model. We use the latest revision of over 100 U.S. time series over the period 1974-2009 (monthly and quarterly data). -
Introducing the Bank of Canada's Projection Model for the Global Economy
To complement its existing set of tools to analyze and forecast developments in the global economy, the Bank of Canada recently developed a version of the Global Projection Model (GPM) jointly with staff at the International Monetary Fund.