E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
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The Canadian Business Cycle: A Comparison of Models
This paper examines the ability of linear and nonlinear models to replicate features of real Canadian GDP. We evaluate the models using various business-cycle metrics. -
Cross-Country Estimates of the Degree of Fiscal Dominance and Central Bank Independence
This paper studies the interdependence between fiscal and monetary policies, and their joint role in the determination of the price level. -
Gold Prices and Inflation
Using data for 14 countries over the 1994 to 2005 period, we assess the leading indicator properties of gold at horizons ranging from 6 to 24 months. -
Micro Foundations of Price-Setting Behaviour: Evidence from Canadian Firms
How do firms adjust prices in the marketplace? Do they tend to adjust prices infrequently in response to changes in market conditions? If so, why? These remain key questions in macroeconomics, particularly for central banks that work to keep inflation low and stable. -
Term Structure Transmission of Monetary Policy
Under bond-rate transmission of monetary policy, the authors show that a generalized Taylor Principle applies, in which the average anticipated path of policy responses to inflation is subject to a lower bound of unity. This result helps explain how bond rates may exhibit stable responses to inflation, even in periods of passive policy. -
Corporate Balance Sheets in Developed Economies: Implications for Investment
In this paper, the authors examine the aggregate national balance-sheets of non-financial corporations in Australia and the G7 countries with a view to assessing both their financial structure and their financial position. More importantly, the authors investigate whether the financial position of non-financial corporations (i.e., debt-to-equity ratio) is material to the economy's investment prospects and whether the importance of this channel differs depending on the structure of corporate financing i.e., bank-based or market-oriented financing structures. -
Perhaps the FOMC Did What It Said It Did: An Alternative Interpretation of the Great Inflation
This paper uses real-time briefing forecasts prepared for the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to provide estimates of historical changes in the design of U.S. monetary policy and in the implied central-bank target for inflation. Empirical results support a description of policy with an effective inflation target of roughly 7 percent in the 1970s. -
Central Bank Performance under Inflation Targeting
The inflation targeting (IT) regime is 17 years old. With practice of IT now in more than 21 countries, there is enough evidence gathered to take stock of the IT experience. In this paper, we analyze the inflation record of IT central banks. -
Does Indexation Bias the Estimated Frequency of Price Adjustment?
We assess the implications of price indexation for estimated frequency of price adjustment in sticky price models of business cycles. These models predominantly assume that non-reoptimized prices are indexed to lagged or average inflation.