E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
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Prospects for Global Current Account Rebalancing
The authors use the Bank of Canada's version of the Global Economy Model, a multi-country, multi-sector dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with an active banking system (the BoC-GEM-FIN), to study the evolution of global current account balances following the recent global financial crisis. -
Le pouvoir de prévision des indices PMI
The forecast of world economic growth plays a key role in the conduct of Canadian monetary policy. In this context, the authors study the usefulness of the monthly Purchasing Managers’ Indexes (PMIs) in predicting short-term real GDP growth in the euro area, Japan, the United Kingdom, and China, as well as in the world economy. -
On the Advantages of Disaggregated Data: Insights from Forecasting the U.S. Economy in a Data-Rich Environment
The good forecasting performance of factor models has been well documented in the literature. While many studies focus on a very limited set of variables (typically GDP and inflation), this study evaluates forecasting performance at disaggregated levels to examine the source of the improved forecasting accuracy, relative to a simple autoregressive model. We use the latest revision of over 100 U.S. time series over the period 1974-2009 (monthly and quarterly data). -
Alternative Optimized Monetary Policy Rules in Multi-Sector Small Open Economies: The Role of Real Rigidities
Inflation-targeting central banks around the world often state their inflation objectives with regard to the consumer price index (CPI). Yet the literature on optimal monetary policy based on models with nominal rigidities and more than one sector suggests that CPI inflation is not always the best choice from a social welfare perspective. -
Introducing the Bank of Canada's Projection Model for the Global Economy
To complement its existing set of tools to analyze and forecast developments in the global economy, the Bank of Canada recently developed a version of the Global Projection Model (GPM) jointly with staff at the International Monetary Fund. -
Price Level Targeting: What Is the Right Price?
Various papers have suggested that Price-Level targeting is a welfare improving policy relative to Inflation targeting. From a practical standpoint, this raises an important yet unanswered question: What is the optimal price index to target? -
Time Variation in Okun's Law: A Canada and U.S. Comparison
This article investigates the stability of Okun's law for Canada and the United States using a time varying parameter approach. Time variation is modeled as driftless random walks and is estimated using the median unbiased estimator approach developed by Stock and Watson (1998). -
Macroprudential Regulation and Systemic Capital Requirements
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, there is interest in reforming bank regulation such that capital requirements are more closely linked to a bank's contribution to the overall risk of the financial system. In our paper we compare alternative mechanisms for allocating the overall risk of a banking system to its member banks. -
Labour Reallocation, Relative Prices and Productivity
This paper documents the rate at which labour flows between industries and between firms within industries using the most recent data available. It examines the determinants of these flows and their relationship with the productivity growth.