E4 - Money and Interest Rates

• An Equilibrium Analysis of the Rise in House Prices and Mortgage Debt

  Staff Working Paper 2013-9 Shaofeng Xu

  This paper examines the contributions of population aging, mortgage innovation and historically low interest rates to the sharp rise in U.S. house prices and mortgage debt between 1994 and 2005.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Asset pricing, Credit and credit aggregates, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E4, E44, G, G1, G11, R, R2, R21

• Countercyclical Bank Capital Requirement and Optimized Monetary Policy Rules

  Staff Working Paper 2013-8 Carlos De Resende, Ali Dib, René Lalonde, Nikita Perevalov

  Using BoC-GEM-Fin, a large-scale DSGE model with real, nominal and financial frictions featuring a banking sector, we explore the macroeconomic implications of various types of countercyclical bank capital regulations. Results suggest that countercyclical capital requirements have a significant stabilizing effect on key macroeconomic variables, but mostly after financial shocks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Economic models, Financial institutions, Financial stability, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E4, E44, E5, G, G1, G2

• A Tractable Monetary Model Under General Preferences

  Staff Working Paper 2013-7 Tsz-Nga Wong

  Consider the monetary model of Lagos and Wright (JPE 2005) but with general preferences and general production. I show that preferences satisfying UXXUHH – (UXH)2 = 0 is a sufficient condition for the existence and uniqueness of monetary equilibrium with degenerate money distribution.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Economic models JEL Code(s): D, D8, D83, E, E4, E40

• Real-financial Linkages through Loan Default and Bank Capital

  Staff Working Paper 2013-3 Tamon Takamura

  Many studies in macroeconomics argue that financial frictions do not amplify the impacts of real shocks. This finding is based on models without endogenous default on loans and bank capital. Using a model featuring endogenous interactions between firm default and bank capital, this paper revisits the propagation mechanisms of real and financial shocks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies, Interest rates JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E4, E44, E6, E69

• The Cyclicality of Sales, Regular and Effective Prices: Business Cycle and Policy Implications

  Staff Working Paper 2013-1 Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Gee Hee Hong

  We study the cyclical properties of sales, regular price changes and average prices paid by consumers (“effective” prices) using data on prices and quantities sold for numerous retailers across many U.S. metropolitan areas.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E4, E5

• On the Welfare Effects of Credit Arrangements

  Staff Working Paper 2012-43 Jonathan Chiu, Mei Dong, Enchuan Shao

  This paper studies the welfare effects of different credit arrangements and how these effects depend on the trading mechanism and inflation. In a competitive market, a deviation from the Friedman rule is always sub-optimal. Moreover, credit arrangements can be welfare-reducing, because increased consumption by credit users will drive up the price level so that money users have to reduce consumption when facing a binding liquidity restraint.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): E, E4, E40, E5, E50

• Estimating the Policy Rule from Money Market Rates when Target Rate Changes Are Lumpy

  Staff Working Paper 2012-41 Jean-Sébastien Fontaine

  Most central banks effect changes to their target or policy rate in discrete increments (e.g., multiples of 0.25%) following public announcements on scheduled dates. Still, for most applications, researchers rely on the assumption that the policy rate changes linearly with economic conditions and they do not distinguish between dates with and without scheduled announcements.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Asset pricing, Financial markets, Interest rates JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43, E44, E47, G, G1, G12, G13
• November 15, 2012

  The Changing Landscape for Retail Payments in Canada and the Implications for the Demand for Cash

  Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2012 Carlos Arango, Kim Huynh, Ben Fung, Gerald Stuber

  Over the past 20 years, there has been a major shift away from the use of paper-based retail payment instruments, such as cash and cheques, toward electronic means of payment, such as debit cards and credit cards. Recent Bank of Canada research on consumers’ choice of payment instruments indicates that cash is frequently used for transactions with low values because of its speed, ease of use and wide acceptance, while debit and credit cards are more commonly used for transactions with higher values because of perceived attributes such as safety and record keeping. While innovations in retail payments currently being introduced into the Canadian marketplace could lead to a further reduction in the use of cash over the longer term, the implications for the use of cash of some of the structural and regulatory developments under way are less clear.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Research Topic(s): Bank notes, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial system regulation and policies, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C8, C83, E, E4, E42, G, G2, G28

• Forecasting Inflation and the Inflation Risk Premiums Using Nominal Yields

  Staff Working Paper 2012-37 Bruno Feunou, Jean-Sébastien Fontaine

  We provide a decomposition of nominal yields into real yields, expectations of future inflation and inflation risk premiums when real bonds or inflation swaps are unavailable or unreliable due to their relative illiquidity.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Asset pricing, Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices, Interest rates JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43, E47, G, G1, G12

• The Role of Credit in International Business Cycles

  Staff Working Paper 2012-36 TengTeng Xu

  This paper examines the role of bank credit in modeling and forecasting business cycle fluctuations, and investigates the international transmission of US credit shocks, using a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) framework and associated country-specific error correction models.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Credit and credit aggregates, Econometric and statistical methods, International financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E3, E32, E4, E44, G, G2, G21