High-Cost Consumer Credit: Desperation, Temptation and Default Staff Working Paper 2025-6 Joaquín Saldain I study the welfare consequences of regulations on high-cost consumer credit in the United States and find that borrowing limits have distributional impacts on households with self-control issues. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial markets, Interest rates JEL Code(s): E, E2, E7, E71, G, G5, G51
Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing: Using the Least Squares Criterion for Quantile Estimation Staff Working Paper 2014-24 Heng Chen Estimation of the quantile model, especially with a large data set, can be computationally burdensome. This paper proposes using the Gaussian approximation, also known as quantile coupling, to estimate a quantile model. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C1, C13, C14, C2, C21
Self-Enforcing Labour Contracts and the Dynamics Puzzle Staff Working Paper 2005-1 Christian Calmès To properly account for the dynamics of key macroeconomic variables, researchers incorporate various internal-propagation mechanisms in their models. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E1, E12, E4, E49, J, J3, J30, J31, J4, J41
Modelling Risk Premiums in Equity and Foreign Exchange Markets Staff Working Paper 2000-9 René Garcia, Maral Kichian The observed predictability of excess returns in equity and foreign exchange markets has largely been attributed to the presence of time-varying risk premiums in these markets. For example, excess equity returns were found to be explained by various financial and economic variables. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Exchange rates, Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, F, F3, F31, G, G1, G12, G15
Optimum Currency Areas and Shock Asymmetry: A Comparison of Europe and the United States Staff Working Paper 1994-1 Nick Chamie, Alain DeSerres, René Lalonde 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 Research Topic(s): Exchange rates, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C4, C40, G, G1, G12
Child Skill Production: Accounting for Parental and Market-Based Time and Goods Investments Staff Working Paper 2020-36 Elizabeth Caucutt, Lance Lochner, Joseph Mullins, Youngmin Park Can daycare replace parents’ time spent with children? We explore this by using data on how parents spend time and money on children and how this spending is related to their child’s development. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Fiscal policy, Labour markets, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D1, D13, H, H3, H31, J, J2, J22, J24
Testing for Financial Contagion with Applications to the Canadian Banking System Staff Working Paper 2009-14 Fuchun Li The author proposes a new test for financial contagion based on a non-parametric measure of the cross-market correlation. The test does not depend on the assumption that the data are drawn from a given probability distribution; therefore, it allows for maximal flexibility in fitting into the data. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Central bank research, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C1, C12, G, G0, G01, G1, G15
Inequality in Parental Transfers and Optimal Need-Based Financial Aid Staff Working Paper 2019-7 Youngmin Park This paper studies optimal need-based financial aid when parental transfers—unobserved by policymakers—vary across and within families of similar means. Using data on U.S. college students, I document substantial inequality in parental transfers, especially among wealthier families. I then analyze how this affects aid design aimed at reducing inefficiencies from borrowing constraints and the aid itself. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Fiscal policy, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D1, D14, D6, D61, D64, D8, D82, I, I2, I22, J, J2, J24
International Borrowing, Specialization and Unemployment in a Small, Open Economy Staff Working Paper 1998-2 Patrick Osakwe, Shouyong Shi Empirical evidence suggests that the unemployment rate and the export/GNP ratio are positively correlated with external debt across developing countries. This paper develops a dynamic model that provides an explanation for the aforementioned relationships. The central idea of our paper is that international borrowing affects unemployment and specialization patterns by unevenly changing the risk-sharing structure—across […] Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): International topics JEL Code(s): F, F3, J, J6
Trend Inflation, Wage and Price Rigidities, and Welfare Staff Working Paper 2007-42 Robert Amano, Kevin Moran, Stephen Murchison, Andrew Rennison This paper studies the steady-state costs of inflation in a general-equilibrium model with real per capita output growth and staggered nominal price and wage contracts. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Inflation: costs and benefits JEL Code(s): E, E0, E5