Overnight Rate Innovations as a Measure of Monetary Policy Shocks in Vector Autoregressions Staff Working Paper 1996-4 Walter Engert, Ben Fung, Jamie Armour The authors examine the Bank of Canada's overnight rate as a measure of monetary policy in vector autoregression (VAR) models. Since the time series of the Bank's current measure of the overnight rate begins only in 1971, the authors splice it to day loan rate observations to obtain a sufficiently long period of data. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Monetary and financial indicators JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52
Regime-Switching Models: A Guide to the Bank of Canada Gauss Procedures Staff Working Paper 1996-3 Simon van Norden, Robert Vigfusson This paper is a user's guide to a set of Gauss procedures developed at the Bank of Canada for estimating regime-switching models. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C6, C63
Decomposing U.S. Nominal Interest Rates into Expected Inflation and Ex Ante Real Interest Rates Using Structural VAR Methodology Staff Working Paper 1996-2 Pierre St-Amant In this paper, the author uses structural vector autoregression methodology to decompose U.S. nominal interest rates into an expected inflation component and an ex ante real interest rate component. He identifies inflation expectations and ex ante real interest rate shocks by assuming that nominal interest rates and inflation expectations move one-for-one in the long-run—they are cointegrated (1,1)—and that the real interest rate is stationary. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Interest rates, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E4, E43
Switching Between Chartists and Fundamentalists: A Markov Regime-Switching Approach Staff Working Paper 1996-1 Robert Vigfusson Since the early 1980s, models based on economic fundamentals have been poor at explaining the movements in the exchange rate (Messe 1990). In response to this problem, Frankel and Froot (1988) developed a model that uses two approaches to forecast the exchange rate: the fundamentalist approach, which bases the forecast on economic fundamentals, and the chartist approach, which bases the forecast on the past behaviour of the exchange rate. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C4, C40, G, G1, G12
The Electronic Purse: An Overview of Recent Developments and Policy Issues Technical Report No. 74 Gerald Stuber Futurists have been speculating about the prospects for a cashless society for many years, and such predictions became more frequent following the introduction of "smart" cards - cards containing a computer chip - in the mid-1970s. Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Digital currencies and fintech, Financial institutions, Payment clearing and settlement systems, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E4, E41, G, G2, G20
The Empirical Performance of Alternative Monetary and Liquidity Aggregates Staff Working Paper 1995-12 Joseph Atta-Mensah This paper examines the empirical performance of alternatives to the monetary aggregates currently published by the Bank of Canada. The results show that real M1 and real M1a perform about equally well in providing leading information about real output at short horizons. However, on theoretical grounds, M1a is a more attractive aggregate, since it excludes […] Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary and financial indicators
Long-Run Demand for M1 Staff Working Paper 1995-11 Scott Hendry The goal of this paper is to investigate and estimate long-run relationships among M1, prices, output and interest rates, with a view to determining if there is a stable relationship that can be interpreted as long-run money demand. The paper uses a maximum-likelihood multiple-equation cointegration technique, developed by Johansen, to fit a system of equations […] Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Monetary aggregates
The Canadian Experience with Weighted Monetary Aggregates Staff Working Paper 1995-10 David Longworth, Joseph Atta-Mensah This paper compares the empirical performance of Canadian weighted monetary aggregates (in particular, Fisher ideal aggregates) with the current summation aggregates, for their information content and forecasting performance in terms of prices, real output and nominal spending for the period 1971Q1 to 1989Q3. The properties of money-demand equations for these aggregates, particularly their temporal stability, […] Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary aggregates
Selection of the Truncation Lag in Structural VARs (or VECMs) with Long-Run Restrictions Staff Working Paper 1995-9 Alain DeSerres, Alain Guay authors examine the issue of lag-length selection in the context of a structural vector autoregression (VAR) and a vector error-correction model with long-run restrictions. First, they show that imposing long-run restrictions implies, in general, a moving-average (MA) component in the stationary multivariate representation. Then they examine the sensitivity of estimates of the permanent and transitory […] Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods
Exchange Rates and Oil Prices Staff Working Paper 1995-8 Robert Amano, Simon van Norden This paper derives analytical gradients for a broad class of regime-switching models with Markovian state-transition probabilities. Such models are usually estimated by maximum likelihood methods, which require the derivatives of the likelihood function with respect to the parameter vector. These gradients are usually calculated by means of numerical techniques. The paper shows that analytical gradients […] Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates