November 17, 2016 Commodity Price Supercycles: What Are They and What Lies Ahead? Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2016 Bahattin Buyuksahin, Kun Mo, Konrad Zmitrowicz Because commodity prices help determine Canada’s terms of trade, employment, income and, ultimately, inflation, it is important to understand what causes them to fluctuate. Since the early 1900s, there have been four commodity price supercycles—which we define as extended periods of boom and bust that can take decades to complete. Now in its downswing phase, the current supercycle started after growth in China and other emerging-market economies in the mid-1990s resulted in an unexpected demand shock. The extent of this downswing depends on numerous factors that are presently uncertain. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles JEL Code(s): C, C1, Q, Q1, Q4, Q41
Identification and Estimation of Risk Aversion in First-Price Auctions with Unobserved Auction Heterogeneity Staff working paper 2016-23 Serafin Grundl, Yu Zhu This paper shows point identification in first-price auction models with risk aversion and unobserved auction heterogeneity by exploiting multiple bids from each auction and variation in the number of bidders. The required exclusion restriction is shown to be consistent with a large class of entry models. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): C, C1, C14, C5, C57, D, D4, D44, L, L0, L00 Research Theme(s): Financial markets and funds management, Market structure, Models and tools, Econometric, statistical and computational methods
Estimating Systematic Risk Under Extremely Adverse Market Conditions Staff working paper 2016-22 Maarten van Oordt, Chen Zhou This paper considers the problem of estimating a linear model between two heavy-tailed variables if the explanatory variable has an extremely low (or high) value. We propose an estimator for the model coefficient by exploiting the tail dependence between the two variables and prove its asymptotic properties. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): C, C1, C14, G, G0, G01 Research Theme(s): Financial system, Financial stability and systemic risk, Models and tools, Econometric, statistical and computational methods
Early Warning of Financial Stress Events: A Credit-Regime-Switching Approach Staff working paper 2016-21 Fuchun Li, Hongyu Xiao We propose an early warning model for predicting the likelihood of a financial stress event for a given future time, and examine whether credit plays an important role in the model as a non-linear propagator of shocks. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): C, C1, C12, C14, G, G0, G01, G1, G17 Research Theme(s): Financial system, Financial stability and systemic risk, Models and tools, Econometric, statistical and computational methods
Understanding Firms’ Inflation Expectations Using the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey Staff working paper 2016-7 Simon Richards, Matthieu Verstraete Inflation expectations are a key determinant of actual and future inflation and thus matter for the conduct of monetary policy. We study how firms form their inflation expectations using quarterly firm-level data from the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey, spanning the 2001 to 2015 period. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): C, C1, C2, C25, D, D2, D21, D8, D84, E, E3, E31, E5, E52, E58 Research Theme(s): Monetary policy, Inflation dynamics and pressures, Monetary policy framework and transmission
New Housing Registrations as a Leading Indicator of the BC Economy Staff discussion paper 2016-3 Calista Cheung, Dmitry Granovsky Housing starts and building permits data are commonly used as leading indicators of economic activity. In British Columbia, all new homes must be registered with the Homeowner Protection Office, a branch of BC Housing, before the issuance of building permits and the start of construction. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers JEL Code(s): C, C1, C13, C5, C53, E, E3, E32, E37 Research Theme(s): Financial system, Household and business credit, Monetary policy, Real economy and forecasting