Staff analytical notes

Staff analytical notes are short articles that focus on topical issues relevant to the current economic and financial context.

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Low for Longer? Why the Global Oil Market in 2014 Is Not Like 1986

In the second half of 2014, oil prices experienced a sharp decline, falling more than 50 per cent between June 2014 and January 2015. A cursory glance at this oil price crash suggests similarities to developments in 1986, when the price of oil declined by more than 50 per cent, initiating an episode of relatively low oil prices that lasted for more than a decade.

The Case of Serial Disappointment

Similar to those of other forecasters, the Bank of Canada’s forecasts of global GDP growth have shown persistent negative errors over the past five years. This is in contrast to the pre-crisis period, when errors were consistently positive as global GDP surprised to the upside. All major regions have contributed to the forecast errors observed since 2011, although the United States has been the most persistent source of notable errors.

The US Labour Market: How Much Slack Remains?

Staff Analytical Note 2016-9 Robert Fay, James Ketcheson
Despite the US unemployment rate being close to estimates of the non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), measures of underemployment remain elevated, which could be an indication of remaining labour market slack. The shares of involuntary part-time workers and long-term unemployment are high relative to the current stage of the business cycle, suggesting available labour inputs are being underutilized.

Crude Oil Prices and Fixed-Asset Cash Spending in the Oil and Gas Industry: Findings from VAR Models

Staff Analytical Note 2016-8 Farrukh Suvankulov
This note investigates the relationship between crude oil prices and investment in the energy sector. We employ a set of vector autoregression (VAR) models (unconstrained VAR, vector error-correction and Bayesian VAR) to formalize the relationship between the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) benchmark and fixed-asset cash spending in the oil and gas extraction and support activities sector of the Canadian economy.

Ce que révèle une analyse sectorielle des dynamiques récentes de l’inflation au Canada

Staff Analytical Note 2016-7 Laurence Savoie-Chabot
Decomposing total inflation in Canada as measured by the consumer price index (CPI) into its key macroeconomic factors, as presented in the most recent Monetary Policy Report, is an interesting exercise that shows how the exchange rate pass-through, commodity prices and the output gap have influenced the evolution of the total inflation rate over time. This aggregate approach, however, may mask important sectoral changes.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Exchange rates, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31

Implementing Market-Based Indicators to Monitor Vulnerabilities of Financial Institutions

Staff Analytical Note 2016-5 Cameron MacDonald, Maarten van Oordt, Robin Scott
This note introduces several market-based indicators and examines how they can further inform the Bank of Canada’s vulnerability assessment of Canadian financial institutions. Market-based indicators of leverage suggest that the solvency risk for major Canadian banks has increased since the beginning of the oil-price correction in the second half of 2014.

April 2016 Annual Reassessment of Potential Output in Canada

This note summarizes the Bank of Canada’s 2016 annual reassessment of potential output growth, which is projected to be 1.5 per cent over 2016–18 and 1.6 per cent in 2019–20. This projection is weaker than the one presented in the April 2015 Monetary Policy Report.

Canadian Labour Market Dispersion: Mind the (Shrinking) Gap

Staff Analytical Note 2016-3 David Amirault, Naveen Rai
Shocks to a currency area can and often do have asymmetric impacts on its regions that, in the absence of perfect labour mobility, lead to gaps in relative labour market performance. Witness, for example, the effects of the 2008/09 recession and subsequent financial crisis in Europe on the dispersion of employment rates across the euro area – and to a lesser extent the United States.
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