February 20, 2003 Call for Input: Improving Financial System Data in Canada Canada's financial system consists of financial institutions, financial markets, and clearing and settlement systems. It is a key part of the infrastructure of our economy. Content Type(s): Press, Market notices
February 18, 2003 Government of Canada Debt Programs - Follow up to Change in Debt Structure Announced in 2003 Budget As announced in the 2003 Budget, the Government will gradually reduce the fixed-rate portion of the debt from two-thirds to 60 per cent. The reduction will begin in the upcoming fiscal year and will be implemented in an orderly and transparent manner over the next five years to maintain a well-functioning Government of Canada securities market. Content Type(s): Press, Market notices
Shift Contagion in Asset Markets Staff Working Paper 2003-5 Toni Gravelle, Maral Kichian, James Morley The authors develop a new methodology to investigate how crises cause the relationship between financial variables to change. Two possible sources of increased co-movement between markets during high-variance episodes are considered: larger common shocks operating through standard market linkages, and a structural change in the propagation of shocks between markets, called "shift contagion." Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, F, F4, F42, G, G1, G15
Are Distorted Beliefs Too Good to be True? Staff Working Paper 2003-4 Miroslav Misina In a recent attempt to account for the equity-premium puzzle within a representative-agent model, Cecchetti, Lam, and Mark (2000) relax the assumption of rational expectations and in its place use the assumption of distorted beliefs. The author shows that the explanatory power of the distorted beliefs model is due to an inconsistency in the model and that an attempt to remove this inconsistency removes the model's explanatory power. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets JEL Code(s): D, D8, D84, G, G1, G12
Modélisation et prévision du taux de change réel effectif américain Staff Working Paper 2003-3 René Lalonde, Patrick Sabourin This study describes a simple model for predicting the real U.S. exchange rate. Starting with a large number of error-correction models, the authors choose the one giving the best out-of-sample forecasts over the period 1992Q3–2002Q1. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models, Exchange rates, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E1, E17, F, F3, F31, F4, F47
Managing Operational Risk in Payment, Clearing, and Settlement Systems Staff Working Paper 2003-2 Kim McPhail Awareness of operational risk has increased greatly in recent years, both at individual financial institutions and for payment, clearing, and settlement systems (PCSS). PCSS consist of networks of interconnected elements (i.e., central operators, participants, and settlement agents); operational problems at any one of the key elements have the potential to disrupt the system as a whole and negatively affect financial stability. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, G, G2, G21
Banking Crises and Contagion: Empirical Evidence Staff Working Paper 2003-1 Eric Santor Recent events, such as the East Asian, Mexican, Scandinavian, and Argentinian crises, have sparked considerable interest in exploring how shocks experienced by one country can spread vis-à-vis real and nominal links to other countries' banking systems. Given the large costs associated with banking-system failures, both economists and policy-makers are interested in predicting the onset of banking crises and assessing the likelihood of contagion during crisis events. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International topics JEL Code(s): F, F3, F30, G, G2, G20
Money in the Bank (of Canada) Technical Report No. 93 David Longworth With the demise of monetary targeting over the past 20 years in many major countries, the question has arisen as to whether central banks should look at money at all when formulating and conducting monetary policy. Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Monetary aggregates, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E5, E50, E51, E52
January 30, 2003 Annual Report 2002 In the year just ended, the global economy faced a number of exceptional challenges, reflecting a wide range of economic, financial, and geopolitical risks and uncertainties. These included the fallout from the September 2001 terrorist attacks, corporate accounting scandals, stock market volatility, and developments in the Middle East. Despite this global backdrop, the Canadian economy outperformed virtually all other industrial economies, growing by about 3 1/4 per cent and creating 560,000 jobs, while inflation expectations remained well anchored to the Bank of Canada’s 2 per cent inflation-control target. Content Type(s): Publications, Annual Report
January 29, 2003 Monetary Policy Protects Canada from Persistent Inflation and Deflation, Governor Says Media Relations Toronto, Ontario In a speech to the Speakers Forum, Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge said today that Canada's macroeconomic policy framework is protecting the economy from both persistently high inflation and the threat of deflation. Content Type(s): Press, Press releases