Swedish Riksbank Notes and Enskilda Bank Notes: Lessons for Digital Currencies Staff Working Paper 2018-27 Ben Fung, Scott Hendry, Warren E. Weber This paper examines the experience of Sweden with government notes and private bank notes to determine how well the Swedish experience corresponds to that of Canada and the United States. Sweden is important to study because it has had government notes in circulation for more than 350 years, and it had government notes before private bank notes. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital currencies and fintech, Financial services JEL Code(s): E, E4, E41, E42, E5, E58
Reconciling Jaimovich-Rebelo Preferences, Habit in Consumption and Labor Supply Staff Working Paper 2018-26 Tom D. Holden, Paul Levine, Jonathan Swarbrick This note studies a form of a utility function of consumption with habit and leisure that (a) is compatible with long-run balanced growth, (b) hits a steady-state observed target for hours worked and (c) is consistent with micro-econometric evidence for the inter-temporal elasticity of substitution and the Frisch elasticity of labor supply. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E24
On the Evolution of the United Kingdom Price Distributions Staff Working Paper 2018-25 Ba M. Chu, Kim Huynh, David T. Jacho-Chávez, Oleksiy Kryvtsov We propose a functional principal components method that accounts for stratified random sample weighting and time dependence in the observations to understand the evolution of distributions of monthly micro-level consumer prices for the United Kingdom (UK). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): C, C1, C14, C8, C83, E, E3, E31, E37
Ambiguity, Nominal Bond Yields and Real Bond Yields Staff Working Paper 2018-24 Guihai Zhao Equilibrium bond-pricing models rely on inflation being bad news for future growth to generate upward-sloping nominal yield curves. We develop a model that can generate upward-sloping nominal and real yield curves by instead using ambiguity about inflation and growth. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Financial markets, Interest rates JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43, G, G0, G00, G1, G12
Noisy Monetary Policy Staff Working Paper 2018-23 Tatjana Dahlhaus, Luca Gambetti We introduce limited information in monetary policy. Agents receive signals from the central bank revealing new information (“news") about the future evolution of the policy rate before changes in the rate actually take place. However, the signal is disturbed by noise. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets, Monetary policy implementation, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): C, C1, C18, C3, C32, E, E0, E02, E4, E43, E5, E52
Uncovered Return Parity: Equity Returns and Currency Returns Staff Working Paper 2018-22 Edouard Djeutem, Geoffrey R. Dunbar We propose an uncovered expected returns parity (URP) condition for the bilateral spot exchange rate. URP implies that unilateral exchange rate equations are misspecified and that equity returns also affect exchange rates. Fama regressions provide evidence that URP is statistically preferred to uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) for nominal bilateral exchange rates between the US dollar and six countries (Australia, Canada, Japan, Norway, Switzerland and the UK) at the monthly frequency. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Exchange rates, International financial markets JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43, F, F3, F31, G, G1, G15
Analysis of Asymmetric GARCH Volatility Models with Applications to Margin Measurement Staff Working Paper 2018-21 Elena Goldman, Xiangjin Shen We explore properties of asymmetric generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models in the threshold GARCH (GTARCH) family and propose a more general Spline-GTARCH model, which captures high-frequency return volatility, low-frequency macroeconomic volatility as well as an asymmetric response to past negative news in both autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH) and GARCH terms. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C5, C58, G, G1, G19, G2, G23, G28
The (Un)Demand for Money in Canada Staff Working Paper 2018-20 Casey Jones, Geoffrey R. Dunbar A novel dataset from the Bank of Canada is used to estimate the deposit functions for banknotes in Canada for three denominations: $1,000, $100 and $50. The broad flavour of the empirical findings is that denominations are different monies, and the structural estimates identify the underlying sources of the non-neutrality. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C31, C36, E, E4, E41
The Political Impact of Immigration: Evidence from the United States Staff Working Paper 2018-19 Anna Maria Mayda, Giovanni Peri, Walter Steingress In this paper we study the impact of immigration to the United States on the vote for the Republican Party by analyzing county-level data on election outcomes between 1990 and 2010. Our main contribution is to separate the effect of high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants, by exploiting the different geography and timing of the inflows of these two groups of immigrants. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International topics, Labour markets JEL Code(s): F, F2, F22, J, J6, J61
Housing Price Network Effects from Public Transit Investment: Evidence from Vancouver Staff Working Paper 2018-18 Alex Chernoff, Andrea Craig In this paper, we estimate the effect on housing prices of the expansion of the Vancouver SkyTrain rapid transit network during the period 2001–11. We extend the canonical residential sorting equilibrium framework to include commuting time in the household utility function. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Economic models, Housing JEL Code(s): H, H4, H41, R, R2, R21, R4, R41