Staff working papers

Using industry-level data for 22 Canadian manufacturing industries, the authors examine the relationship between exchange rates and investment during the period 1981–97.

The Bank of Canada is one of very few central banks that has made records of the intraday timing of its intervention operations available to researchers.

This study has two aspects. First, the author examines the theoretical properties of the constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function and the implications of this formulation for the properties of a structural macroeconomic model.

The author develops the first comparative empirical study of bank failures during the nineties between East Asia and Latin America using bank-level data, in order to address the following two questions: (i) To what extent did individual bank conditions explain bank failures? (ii) Did mainly the weakest banks, in terms of their fundamentals, fail in the crisis countries?

The author models the choice between credit cards and home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) within a framework where consumers hold lines of credit as instruments of consumption smoothing across state and time.

Changes in risk perception have been used in various contexts to explain shorter-term developments in financial markets, as part of a mechanism that amplifies fluctuations in financial markets, as well as in accounts of "irrational exuberance."

The linkages between inflation and the economy's cyclical position are thought to be strongly affected by the credibility of monetary authorities.

In a recent paper, Chang, Gomes, and Schorfheide (2002) extend the standard real business cycle (RBC) model to allow for a learning-by-doing (LBD) mechanism whereby current labour supply affects future productivity.

The authors provide some of the first empirical evidence on labour market adjustments to exchange rate movements in Canadian manufacturing industries.

The authors measure the economies of scale of Canada's six largest banks and their costefficiency over time. Using a unique panel data set from 1983 to 2003, they estimate pooled translog cost functions and derive measures of relative efficiency and economies of scale.