E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
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Benchmarks for assessing labour market health
We propose a range of benchmarks for assessing labour market strength for monetary policy. This work builds on a previous framework that considers how diverse and segmented the labour market is. We apply these benchmarks to the Canadian labour market and find that it has more than recovered from the COVID-19 shock. -
Contribution of Human Capital Accumulation to Canadian Economic Growth
This paper quantifies the contribution of human capital accumulation to the growth of real gross domestic product (GDP) in Canada. -
Real Exchange Rate Decompositions
We break down the exchange rate based on an explicit link between fixed income and currency markets. We isolate a foreign exchange risk premium and show it is the main driver of the exchange rate between the Canadian and US dollars, especially on monetary policy and macroeconomic news announcement days. -
Equilibrium in Two-Sided Markets for Payments: Consumer Awareness and the Welfare Cost of the Interchange Fee
We construct and estimate a structural two-stage model of equilibrium in a market for payments in order to quantify the network externalities and identify the main determinants of consumer and merchant decisions. -
Job Ladder and Business Cycles
During downturns, workers get stuck in low-productivity jobs and wages remain stagnant. I build an heterogenous agent incomplete market model with a full job ladder that accounts for these facts. An adverse financial shock calibrated to the US Great Recession replicates the period’s slow recovery and missing disinflation. -
COVID-19, Containment and Consumption
We assess the impact of COVID-19 on consumption indicators by estimating the effects of government-mandated containment measures and of the willingness of individuals to voluntarily physically distance to prevent contagion. -
Household Heterogeneity and the Performance of Monetary Policy Frameworks
Consumption inequality and a low interest rate environment are two important trends in today’s economy. But the implications they may have—and how those implications interact—within different monetary policy frameworks are not well understood. We study the ranking of alternative frameworks that take these trends into account. -
The Central Bank Strikes Back! Credibility of Monetary Policy under Fiscal Influence
Central banks in many advanced economies enjoy a high degree of independence, which protects monetary policy decisions from political influence. But how should independent central banks react if pressured by fiscal policy-makers? We examine whether a central bank should design a monetary policy framework that prescribes acting conditionally on how fiscal policy behaves. -
Macroeconomic Predictions Using Payments Data and Machine Learning
We demonstrate the usefulness of payment systems data and machine learning models for macroeconomic predictions and provide a set of econometric tools to overcome associated challenges.