Econometric and statistical methods
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Household indebtedness risks in the wake of COVID‑19
COVID-19 presents challenges for indebted households. We assess these by drawing parallels between pandemics and natural disasters. Taking into account the financial health of the household sector when the pandemic began, we run model simulations to illustrate how payment deferrals and the labour market recovery will affect mortgage defaults. -
Endogenous Time Variation in Vector Autoregressions
We introduce a new class of time-varying parameter vector autoregressions (TVP-VARs) where the identified structural innovations are allowed to influence — contemporaneously and with a lag — the dynamics of the intercept and autoregressive coefficients in these models. -
Welfare Analysis of Equilibria With and Without Early Termination Fees in the US Wireless Industry
The elimination of long-term contracts and early termination fees (ETFs) in the US wireless industry at the end of 2015 increased monthly service fees by 2 to 5 percent. Nevertheless, consumers are clearly better off without ETFs. While firms’ revenues from ETFs vanish, their profits from monthly fees increase. As a result, the overall effect on producer profits is less clear. -
IMPACT: The Bank of Canada’s International Model for Projecting Activity
We present the structure and features of the International Model for Projecting Activity (IMPACT), a global semi-structural model used to conduct projections and policy analysis at the Bank of Canada. Major blocks of the model are developed based on the rational error correction framework of Kozicki and Tinsley (1999), which allows the model to strike a balance between theoretical structure and empirical performance. -
Identifying Consumer-Welfare Changes when Online Search Platforms Change Their List of Search Results
Online shopping is often guided by search platforms. Consumers type keywords into query boxes, and search platforms deliver a list of products. Consumers' attention is limited, and exhaustive searches are often impractical. -
Monetary Payoff and Utility Function in Adaptive Learning Models
When players repeatedly face an identical or similar game (e.g., coordination game, technology adoption game, or product choice game), they may learn through experience to perform better in the future. This learning behaviour has important economic implications. -
On the Evolution of Multiple Jobholding in Canada
The number of workers who hold more than one job (a.k.a. multiple jobholders) has increased recently in Canada. While this seems to echo the view that non-standard work arrangements are becoming pervasive, the increase has in fact been trivial compared with the long-run rise of multiple jobholding that has occurred since the mid-1970s. -
2018 Merchant Acceptance Survey
In 2015, the Bank of Canada surveyed merchants and found that cash was nearly universally accepted (Fung, Huynh and Kosse 2017). Since 2015, retail payments in Canada have become increasingly digitalized, as many Canadians have adopted digital payment innovations like contactless cards and Interac e-Transfer. -
Extreme Downside Risk in Asset Returns
Financial markets can experience sudden and extreme downward movements. Investors are highly concerned about the performance of their assets in such scenarios. Some assets perform badly in a downturn in the market; others have milder reactions.