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The authors attempt to determine whether the primary advantage of the flexible exchange rate between Canada and the United States—the rapid adjustment of the real exchange rate following an asymmetrical shock—is as evident at the regional as at the national level.

We examine whether there is a significant relationship between government and private consumption for Canada. We derive estimating equations between the two types of consumption under both cointegration and no-cointegration assumptions.

In this study, the author examines the hypothesis of private-sector debt overhang, which suggests that households and businesses may on occasion find themselves holding too much debt and so decide to reduce it by cutting back expenditures. His aim is to determine whether this hypothesis can help explain the weakness of credit growth and the sluggishness of the recent economic recovery in Canada.

We examine the ability of the simple linear-quadratic model under rational expectations to explain dynamic behaviour of aggregate Canadian imports. In contrast to authors of previous studies who examine dynamic behaviour using the LQ model, we estimate the structural parameters using the Euler equation in a limited information framework that does not require an explicit solution for the model's control variables in terms of the exogenous forcing variables.

This paper provides an extensive survey of the literature on exchange rate volatility and trade, examining both the theory that underlies the work in this area and the results of empirical studies published since 1988.

In this paper, we estimate a fully optimized BVAR model of the Canadian economy for the period 1971-87. The model is well-adapted to the features of a small open economy. We show how it can be used as an input in the monetary policy process either as a forecasting instrument or an analytical tool.

This paper examines the predictive content of the term structure of interest rates for economic activity in Canada. Recent papers for the United States and other countries find that the slope of the term structure is a very good predictor of output growth.

In a recent paper Mercenier and Sekkat (1988) conclude that the Bank of Canada has followed a policy of exchange rate targeting using the money supply. We re-examine their results using a different estimation approach and with different assumptions about the forcing process of the exogenous variables.

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.

For the five overseas countries considered in this study (Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Japan), data on real GDP are released on a quarterly basis at least two months after the end-of-quarter.