November 13, 2014 Should Forward Guidance Be Backward-Looking? Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2014 Rhys R. Mendes, Stephen Murchison When constrained by the zero lower bound, some central banks have communicated a threshold that must be met before short-term interest rates would be permitted to rise. Simulation results for Canada show that forward guidance that is conditional on achieving a price-level threshold can theoretically raise demand and inflation expectations by significantly more than unemployment thresholds. This superior performance is attributable to the fact that the price-level threshold depends on past inflation outcomes. In practice, however, history-dependent thresholds such as this might be more challenging for central banks to communicate. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E58
November 13, 2014 Firm Strategy, Competitiveness and Productivity: The Case for Canada Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2014 Lori Rennison, Farid Novin, Matthieu Verstraete At a time when the Bank is expecting a rotation of demand toward exports and investment, and transformative global trends are placing increasing emphasis on innovation, technology and organizational learning, an understanding of the competitiveness strategies of Canadian firms and the factors affecting them has become particularly relevant. This article summarizes findings from a Bank of Canada survey of 151 firms designed to extract signals on elements of firm strategy and organizational capital in order to help inform the macroeconomic outlook. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Monetary policy and uncertainty, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D2, D23, D24, E, E2, E22, F, F2, F20, L, L1, L10, L2, L20, M, M1, M10, O, O3, O31, O4, O47
Credit Market Frictions and Sudden Stops Staff Working Paper 2014-49 Yuko Imura Financial crises in emerging economies in the 1980s and 1990s often entailed abrupt declines in foreign capital inflows, improvements in trade balance, and large declines in output and total factor productivity (TFP). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Credit and credit aggregates, Financial markets, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E2, E22, E3, E32, F, F4, F41, G, G0, G01
The Propagation of Industrial Business Cycles Staff Working Paper 2014-48 Maximo Camacho, Danilo Leiva-Leon This paper examines the business cycle linkages that propagate industry-specific business cycle shocks throughout the economy in a way that (sometimes) generates aggregated cycles. The transmission of sectoral business cycles is modelled through a multivariate Markov-switching model, which is estimated by Gibbs sampling. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Domestic demand and components, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, E, E2, E27, E3, E32
Labour Share Fluctuations in Emerging Markets: The Role of the Cost of Borrowing Staff Working Paper 2014-47 Serdar Kabaca This paper contributes to the literature by documenting labour income share fluctuations in emerging-market economies and proposing an explanation for them. Time-series data indicate that emerging markets differ from developed markets in terms of changes in the labour share over the business cycle. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Development economics, Interest rates, International topics, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E25, E4, E44, F, F4, F41
On the Importance of Sales for Aggregate Price Flexibility Staff Working Paper 2014-45 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Nicolas Vincent Macroeconomists have traditionally ignored the behavior of temporary price markdowns (“sales”) by retailers. Although sales are common in the micro price data, they are assumed to be unrelated to macroeconomic phenomena and generally filtered out. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Inflation and prices, Market structure and pricing, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E32, E5, E52, L, L1, L11, L2, L25, L8, L81, M, M3, M31
Real-Time Nowcasting of Nominal GDP Under Structural Breaks Staff Working Paper 2014-39 William A. Barnett, Marcelle Chauvet, Danilo Leiva-Leon This paper provides a framework for the early assessment of current U.S. nominal GDP growth, which has been considered a potential new monetary policy target. The nowcasts are computed using the exact amount of information that policy-makers have available at the time predictions are made. However, real-time information arrives at different frequencies and asynchronously, which poses challenges of mixed frequencies, missing data and ragged edges. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E2, E27, E3, E31, E32
A New Approach to Infer Changes in the Synchronization of Business Cycle Phases Staff Working Paper 2014-38 Danilo Leiva-Leon This paper proposes a Markov-switching framework to endogenously identify the following: (1) regimes where economies synchronously enter recessionary and expansionary phases; and (2) regimes where economies are unsynchronized, essentially following independent business cycles. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, C4, C45, E, E3, E32
Search Frictions, Financial Frictions and Labour Market Fluctuations in Emerging Markets Staff Working Paper 2014-35 Sumru Altug, Serdar Kabaca This paper examines the role of the extensive and intensive margins of labour input in the context of a business cycle model with a financial friction. We document significant variation in the hours worked per worker for many emerging-market economies. Both employment and hours worked per worker are positively correlated with each other and with output. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Development economics, Interest rates, International topics, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, F, F4, F41, J, J4, J40
Housework and Fiscal Expansions Staff Working Paper 2014-34 Stefano Gnocchi, Daniela Hauser, Evi Pappa We build an otherwise-standard business cycle model with housework, calibrated consistently with data on time use, in order to discipline consumption-hours complementarity and relate its strength to the size of fiscal multipliers. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Fiscal policy JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E3, E32, E5, E52, E6, E62