December 31, 2018 Research Update - December 2018 This monthly newsletter features the latest research publications by Bank of Canada economists including external publications and working papers published on the Bank of Canada’s website. Content Type(s): Staff research, Research newsletters
December 31, 2018 Summary of Government of Canada - Outstanding as at 31 December 2018 Content Type(s): Publications, Historical: Securities and loans
December 21, 2018 Business Outlook Survey—Winter 2018 Results from the winter Business Outlook Survey continue to indicate positive business sentiment and elevated capacity pressures in most regions. For firms in the Prairies, the outlook has weakened. Content Type(s): Publications, Business Outlook Survey
December 21, 2018 Senior Loan Officer Survey—Fourth Quarter of 2018 Overall household lending conditions were unchanged this quarter, although mortgage approval rates were lower. More widespread easing of business lending conditions continues to be driven by competition for corporate borrowers. Content Type(s): Publications, Senior Loan Officer Survey
December 20, 2018 The Bank’s Medium‐term Research Plan, 2019–21 Increasing the relevance and visibility of Bank research
Limited Commitment, Endogenous Credibility and the Challenges of Price-level Targeting Staff Working Paper 2018-61 Gino Cateau, Malik Shukayev This paper studies the cost of limited commitment when a central bank has the discretion to adjust policy whenever the costs of honoring its past commitments become high. Specifically, we consider a central bank that seeks to implement optimal policy in a New Keynesian model by committing to a price-level target path. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credibility, Inflation targets, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, E52
Inference in Games Without Nash Equilibrium: An Application to Restaurants’ Competition in Opening Hours Staff Working Paper 2018-60 Erhao Xie This paper relaxes the Bayesian Nash equilibrium (BNE) assumption commonly imposed in empirical discrete choice games with incomplete information. Instead of assuming that players have unbiased/correct expectations, my model treats a player’s belief about the behavior of other players as an unrestricted unknown function. I study the joint identification of belief and payoff functions. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): C, C5, C57, L, L1, L13, L8, L85
Credibility, Flexibility and Renewal: The Evolution of Inflation Targeting in Canada Staff Discussion Paper 2018-18 Thomas J. Carter, Rhys R. Mendes, Lawrence L. Schembri In 1991, Canada became the second country to adopt an inflation target as a central pillar of its monetary policy framework. The regime has proven much more successful than initially expected, both in achieving price stability and in stabilizing the real economy against a wide range of shocks. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Credibility, Inflation targets, Monetary policy, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E58, E6, E61
The Role of Corporate Saving over the Business Cycle: Shock Absorber or Amplifier? Staff Working Paper 2018-59 Xiaodan Gao, Shaofeng Xu We document countercyclical corporate saving behavior with the degree of countercyclicality varying nonmonotonically with firm size. We then develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms to explain the pattern and study its implications for business cycles. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E2, E20, E22, E3, E32, G, G3, G31, G32