E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

• Banks, Credit Market Frictions, and Business Cycles

  Staff Working Paper 2010-24 Ali Dib

  The author proposes a micro-founded framework that incorporates an active banking sector into a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with a financial accelerator.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Credit and credit aggregates, Economic models, Financial stability JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E4, E44, G, G1

• Nowcasting the Global Economy

  Staff Discussion Paper 2010-12 James Rossiter

  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).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Research Topic(s): Economic models, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E37, F, F4, F47

• Inventories in ToTEM

  Staff Discussion Paper 2010-9 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Yang Zhang

  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.

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

• Inventories, Stockouts, and ToTEM

  Staff Discussion Paper 2010-8 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Yang Zhang

  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.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E32

• The Transmission of Shocks to the Chinese Economy in a Global Context: A Model-Based Approach

  Staff Working Paper 2010-17 Jeannine Bailliu, Patrick Blagrave

  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.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Exchange rate regimes, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E5, E52, F, F4, F41

• The Fisher BCPI: The Bank of Canada’s New Commodity Price Index

  Staff Discussion Paper 2010-6 Ilan Kolet, Ryan Macdonald

  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).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): C, C1, E, E3

• Le pouvoir de prévision des indices PMI

  Staff Discussion Paper 2010-3 Claudia Godbout, Jocelyn Jacob

  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.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E37, F, F4, F47

• On the Advantages of Disaggregated Data: Insights from Forecasting the U.S. Economy in a Data-Rich Environment

  Staff Working Paper 2010-10 Nikita Perevalov, Philipp Maier

  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).

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

• Introducing the Bank of Canada's Projection Model for the Global Economy

  Technical Report No. 99 Jeannine Bailliu, Patrick Blagrave, James Rossiter

  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.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C6, C68, E, E2, E27, E3, E37, F, F0, F01

• Price Level Targeting: What Is the Right Price?

  Staff Working Paper 2010-8 Malik Shukayev, Alexander Ueberfeldt

  Various papers have suggested that Price-Level targeting is a welfare improving policy relative to Inflation targeting. From a practical standpoint, this raises an important yet unanswered question: What is the optimal price index to target?

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E5, E52