Perhaps the FOMC Did What It Said It Did: An Alternative Interpretation of the Great Inflation Staff Working Paper 2007-19 Sharon Kozicki, P. A. Tinsley This paper uses real-time briefing forecasts prepared for the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to provide estimates of historical changes in the design of U.S. monetary policy and in the implied central-bank target for inflation. Empirical results support a description of policy with an effective inflation target of roughly 7 percent in the 1970s. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Monetary aggregates, Monetary policy implementation JEL Code(s): E, E3, E5, N, N1
Central Bank Performance under Inflation Targeting Staff Working Paper 2007-18 Marc-André Gosselin The inflation targeting (IT) regime is 17 years old. With practice of IT now in more than 21 countries, there is enough evidence gathered to take stock of the IT experience. In this paper, we analyze the inflation record of IT central banks. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Inflation targets, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, E52, E58
Firms Dynamics, Bankruptcy Laws and Total Factor Productivity Staff Working Paper 2007-17 Hajime Tomura This paper analyzes endogenous fluctuations in total factor productivity (TFP) in a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents, and illustrates the interaction of credit market frictions, asset prices, the entry and exit of firms, and fluctuations in TFP in response to firm-level productivity and aggregate credit-market shocks. I also analyze the effect of bankruptcy and foreclosure laws on fluctuations in TFP through their effect on credit market frictions. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D2, D24, E, E4, E44, G, G3, G33
World Real Interest Rates: A Global Savings and Investment Perspective Staff Working Paper 2007-16 Brigitte Desroches, Michael Francis Over the past 15 years, long-term interest rates have declined to levels not seen since the 1970s. This paper explores possible shifts in global savings and investment that have led to this fall in the world real interest rate. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Interest rates, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E2, E4, F, F3
Does Indexation Bias the Estimated Frequency of Price Adjustment? Staff Working Paper 2007-15 Maral Kichian, Oleksiy Kryvtsov We assess the implications of price indexation for estimated frequency of price adjustment in sticky price models of business cycles. These models predominantly assume that non-reoptimized prices are indexed to lagged or average inflation. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E37
Optimization in a Simulation Setting: Use of Function Approximation in Debt Strategy Analysis Staff Working Paper 2007-13 David Bolder, Tiago Rubin The stochastic simulation model suggested by Bolder (2003) for the analysis of the federal government's debt-management strategy provides a wide variety of useful information. It does not, however, assist in determining an optimal debt-management strategy for the government in its current form. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Debt management, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets, Fiscal policy JEL Code(s): C, C0, C1, C14, C15, C5, C51, C52, C6, C61, C65, E, E6, G, G1, H, H6, H63
Uncollateralized Overnight Loans Settled in LVTS Staff Working Paper 2007-11 Scott Hendry, Nadja Kamhi Loan-level data on the uncollateralized overnight loan market is generated using payment data from Canada's Large Value Transfer System (LVTS) and a modified version of the methodology proposed in Furfine (1999). There were on average just under 100 loans extended in this market each day from March 2004 to March 2006 for a total daily value of about $5 billion. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Interest rates JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, E5, E50, G, G1, G12
Do We Need the IMF to Resolve a Crisis? Lessons from Past Episodes of Debt Restructuring Staff Working Paper 2007-10 Philipp Maier This study investigate how debt restructurings have evolved over the decades. Debtors and creditors have a long history of engaging an outsider – a “third party”, such as the IMF – to organise and facilitate debt restructurings. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial stability, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E5, F, F3, N, N1, N2
Evaluating Forecasts from Factor Models for Canadian GDP Growth and Core Inflation Staff Working Paper 2007-8 Frédérick Demers, Calista Cheung This paper evaluates the performance of static and dynamic factor models for forecasting Canadian real output growth and core inflation on a quarterly basis. We extract the common component from a large number of macroeconomic indicators, and use the estimates to compute out-of-sample forecasts under a recursive and a rolling scheme with different window sizes. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E3, E37
Technology Shocks and Business Cycles: The Role of Processing Stages and Nominal Rigidities Staff Working Paper 2007-7 Louis Phaneuf, Nooman Rebei This paper develops and estimates a dynamic general equilibrium model that realistically accounts for an input-output linkage between firms operating at different stages of processing. Firms face technological change which is specific to their processing stage and charge new prices according to stage-specific Calvo-probabilities. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32