E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
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How Fast Can China Grow? The Middle Kingdom’s Prospects to 2030
Given its size and importance for global commodity markets, the question of how fast the Chinese economy can grow over the medium term is an important one. This paper addresses this question by examining the evolution of the supply side of the Chinese economy over history and projecting how it will evolve over the next 15 years. -
A Bitcoin Standard: Lessons from the Gold Standard
This paper imagines a world in which countries are on the Bitcoin standard, a monetary system in which all media of exchange are Bitcoin or are backed by it. The paper explores the similarities and differences between the Bitcoin standard and the gold standard and describes the media of exchange that would exist under the Bitcoin standard. -
Wait a Minute: The Efficacy of Discounting versus Non-Pecuniary Payment Steering
Merchants who accept credit cards face payment processing fees. In most countries, the no-surcharge rule prohibits them from using surcharges to pass these fees on to customers. -
Understanding Firms’ Inflation Expectations Using the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey
Inflation expectations are a key determinant of actual and future inflation and thus matter for the conduct of monetary policy. We study how firms form their inflation expectations using quarterly firm-level data from the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey, spanning the 2001 to 2015 period. -
Macroeconomic Uncertainty Through the Lens of Professional Forecasters
We analyze the evolution of macroeconomic uncertainty in the United States, based on the forecast errors of consensus survey forecasts of different economic indicators. Comprehensive information contained in the survey forecasts enables us to capture a real-time subjective measure of uncertainty in a simple framework. -
Monetary Commitment and the Level of Public Debt
We analyze the interaction between committed monetary policy and discretionary fiscal policy in a model with public debt, endogenous government expenditures, distortive taxation and nominal rigidities. -
What Is Behind the Weakness in Global Investment?
The recovery in private business investment globally remains extremely weak more than seven years after the financial crisis. This paper contributes to the ongoing policy debate on the factors behind this weakness by analyzing the role of growth prospects and uncertainty in explaining developments in non-residential private business investment in large advanced economies since the crisis. -
New Housing Registrations as a Leading Indicator of the BC Economy
Housing starts and building permits data are commonly used as leading indicators of economic activity. In British Columbia, all new homes must be registered with the Homeowner Protection Office, a branch of BC Housing, before the issuance of building permits and the start of construction. -
Agency Costs, Risk Shocks and International Cycles
We add agency costs as in Carlstrom and Fuerst (1997) into a two-country, two-good international business-cycle model. In our model, changes in the relative price of investment arise endogenously.