The Role of Card Acceptance in the Transaction Demand for Money Staff Working Paper 2014-44 Kim Huynh, Philipp Schmidt-Dengler, Helmut Stix The use of payment cards, either debit or credit, is becoming more and more widespread in developed economies. Nevertheless, the use of cash remains significant. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital currencies and fintech, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial services JEL Code(s): C, C3, C35, C8, C83, E, E4, E41
Balance Sheets of Financial Intermediaries: Do They Forecast Economic Activity? Staff Working Paper 2014-40 Rodrigo Sekkel This paper conducts a real-time, out-of-sample analysis of the forecasting power of various aggregate financial intermediaries’ balance sheets to a wide range of economic activity measures in the United States. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53
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
Predicting Financial Stress Events: A Signal Extraction Approach Staff Working Paper 2014-37 Ian Christensen, Fuchun Li The objective of this paper is to propose an early warning system that can predict the likelihood of the occurrence of financial stress events within a given period of time. To achieve this goal, the signal extraction approach proposed by Kaminsky, Lizondo and Reinhart (1998) is used to monitor the evolution of a number of economic indicators that tend to exhibit an unusual behaviour in the periods preceding a financial stress event. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C1, C14, C4, E, E3, E37, E4, E47, F, F3, F36, F37, G, G0, G01, G1, G17
Analyzing and Forecasting the Canadian Economy through the LENS Model Technical Report No. 102 Olivier Gervais, Marc-André Gosselin The authors describe the key features of a new large-scale Canadian macroeconomic forecasting model developed over the past two years at the Bank of Canada. Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E1, E17, E2, E27, E3, E37, F, F1, F17
Forecasting Short-Term Real GDP Growth in the Euro Area and Japan Using Unrestricted MIDAS Regressions Staff Discussion Paper 2014-3 Maxime Leboeuf, Louis Morel In this paper, the authors develop a new tool to improve the short-term forecasting of real GDP growth in the euro area and Japan. This new tool, which uses unrestricted mixed-data sampling (U-MIDAS) regressions, allows an evaluation of the usefulness of a wide range of indicators in predicting short-term real GDP growth. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C50, C53, E, E3, E37, E4, E47
Retail Payment Innovations and Cash Usage: Accounting for Attrition Using Refreshment Samples Staff Working Paper 2014-27 Heng Chen, Marie-Hélène Felt, Kim Huynh We exploit the panel dimension of the Canadian Financial Monitor (CFM) data to estimate the impact of retail payment innovations on cash usage. We estimate a semiparametric panel data model that accounts for unobserved heterogeneity and allows for general forms of non-random attrition. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital currencies and fintech, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial services JEL Code(s): C, C3, C35, E, E4, E41
Filling in the Blanks: Network Structure and Interbank Contagion Staff Working Paper 2014-26 Kartik Anand, Ben Craig, Goetz von Peter The network pattern of financial linkages is important in many areas of banking and finance. Yet bilateral linkages are often unobserved, and maximum entropy serves as the leading method for estimating counterparty exposures. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial institutions, Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C6, C63, D, D8, D85, G, G2, G21, L, L1, L14
Improving Overnight Loan Identification in Payments Systems Staff Working Paper 2014-25 Mark Rempel Information on the allocation and pricing of over-the-counter (OTC) markets is scarce. Furfine (1999) pioneered an algorithm that provides transaction-level data on the OTC interbank lending market. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets, Interest rates, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C3, C38, C5, C53, E, E4, E42, E44, G, G1, G10