E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics

• Expectations and Monetary Policy: Experimental Evidence

  Staff Working Paper 2013-44 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Luba Petersen

  The effectiveness of monetary policy depends, to a large extent, on market expectations of its future actions. In a standard New Keynesian business-cycle model with rational expectations, systematic monetary policy reduces the variance of inflation and the output gap by at least two-thirds.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Monetary policy implementation, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): C, C9, D, D8, D84, E, E3, E5, E52

• Perceived Inflation Persistence

  Staff Working Paper 2013-43 Monica Jain

  The Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) has had vast influence on research related to better understanding expectation formation and the behaviour of macroeconomic agents. Inflation expectations, in particular, have received a great deal of attention, since they play a crucial role in determining real interest rates, the expectations-augmented Phillips curve and monetary policy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E37

• High-Frequency Real Economic Activity Indicator for Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2013-42 Gitanjali Kumar

  I construct a weekly measure of real economic activity in Canada. Based on the work of Aruoba et al. (2009), the indicator is extracted as an unobserved component underlying the co-movement of four monthly observed real macroeconomic variables - employment, manufacturing sales, retail sales and GDP.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C38, E, E3, E32

• Central Bank Communications Before, During and After the Crisis: From Open-Market Operations to Open-Mouth Policy

  Staff Working Paper 2013-41 Ianthi Vayid

  The days when secrecy and opacity were the bywords of central banking are gone. The advent of inflation targeting in the early 1990s acted as the catalyst for enhanced transparency and communications in the conduct of monetary policy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Credibility, Financial stability, Inflation targets, Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy implementation JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E58

• Unemployment Fluctuations in a Small Open-Economy Model with Segmented Labour Markets: The Case of Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2013-40 Yahong Zhang

  The recent financial crisis and subsequent recession have spurred great interest in the sources of unemployment fluctuations. Previous studies predominantly assume a single economy-wide labour market, and therefore abstract from differences across sectorspecific labour markets in the economy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E4, E44, J, J6
• November 14, 2013

  Assessing Financial System Vulnerabilities: An Early Warning Approach

  Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2013 Gurnain Pasricha, Tom Roberts, Ian Christensen, Brad Howell

  This article focuses on a quantitative method to identify financial system vulnerabilities, specifically, an imbalance indicator model (IIM) and its application to Canada. An IIM identifies potential vulnerabilities in a financial system by comparing current economic and financial data with data from periods leading up to past episodes of financial stress. It complements other sources of information - including market intelligence and regular monitoring of the economy - that policy-makers use to assess vulnerabilities.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability, Monetary and financial indicators JEL Code(s): E, E6, E66, G, G0, G01

• Some Economics of Private Digital Currency

  Staff Working Paper 2013-38 Joshua S. Gans, Hanna Halaburda

  This paper reviews some recent developments in digital currency, focusing on platform-sponsored currencies such as Facebook Credits.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital currencies and fintech, Economic models, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): D, D4, D42, E, E4, L, L5, L51

• Measuring Uncertainty in Monetary Policy Using Implied Volatility and Realized Volatility

  Staff Working Paper 2013-37 Bo Young Chang, Bruno Feunou

  We measure uncertainty surrounding the central bank’s future policy rates using implied volatility computed from interest rate option prices and realized volatility computed from intraday prices of interest rate futures.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary and financial indicators, Monetary policy and uncertainty JEL Code(s): E, E4

• ToTEM II: An Updated Version of the Bank of Canada’s Quarterly Projection Model

  Technical Report No. 100 José Dorich, Michael K. Johnston, Rhys R. Mendes, Stephen Murchison, Yang Zhang

  This report provides a detailed technical description of an updated version of the Terms-of-Trade Economic Model (ToTEM II), which replaced ToTEM (Murchison and Rennison 2006) in June 2011 as the Bank of Canada’s quarterly projection model for Canada.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E1, E17, E2, E20, E3, E30, E4, E40, E5, E50, F, F4, F41

• The Common Component of CPI: An Alternative Measure of Underlying Inflation for Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2013-35 Mikael Khan, Louis Morel, Patrick Sabourin

  In this paper, the authors propose a measure of underlying inflation for Canada obtained from estimating a monthly factor model on individual components of the CPI. This measure, labelled the common component of CPI, has intuitive appeal and a number of interesting features.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): C, C1, E, E3, E31, E32, E5, E52, E58