Econometric and statistical methods
-
-
Adoption Costs of Financial Innovation: Evidence from Italian ATM Cards
The discrete choice to adopt a financial innovation affects a household’s exposure to inflation and transactions costs. We model this adoption decision as being subject to an unobserved cost. -
A Dynamic Factor Model for Nowcasting Canadian GDP Growth
This paper estimates a dynamic factor model (DFM) for nowcasting Canadian gross domestic product. The model is estimated with a mix of soft and hard indicators, and it features a high share of international data. -
January 31, 2017
Models and the Art and Science of Making Monetary Policy
Governor Stephen S. Poloz discusses the evolution of economic models and the need for central bankers to apply judgment in using them. -
Global Real Activity for Canadian Exports: GRACE
Canadian exports have often disappointed since the Great Recession. The apparent disconnect between exports and the Bank of Canada’s current measure of foreign demand has created an impetus to search for an alternative. -
November 17, 2016
Commodity Price Supercycles: What Are They and What Lies Ahead?
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. -
Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity in Canada: Evidence from Micro- Level Data
We assess the importance of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) in Canada using both firm- and worker-level microdata. In particular, we analyze employer-level administrative data from the Major Wage Settlements (MWS) and household-based survey data from the Survey of Labour Income Dynamics (SLID). -
Credit Risk and Collateral Demand in a Retail Payment System
The recent financial crisis has led to the development of new regulations to control risk in designated payment systems, and the implementation of new credit risk management standards is one of the key issues. In this paper, we study various credit risk management schemes for the Canadian retail payment system (ACSS) that are designed to cover the exposure of a defaulting member. -
Time-Varying Crash Risk: The Role of Stock Market Liquidity
We estimate a continuous-time model with stochastic volatility and dynamic crash probability for the S&P 500 index and find that market illiquidity dominates other factors in explaining the stock market crash risk. While the crash probability is time-varying, its dynamic depends only weakly on return variance once we include market illiquidity as an economic variable in the model. -
Crude Oil Prices and Fixed-Asset Cash Spending in the Oil and Gas Industry: Findings from VAR Models
This note investigates the relationship between crude oil prices and investment in the energy sector. We employ a set of vector autoregression (VAR) models (unconstrained VAR, vector error-correction and Bayesian VAR) to formalize the relationship between the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) benchmark and fixed-asset cash spending in the oil and gas extraction and support activities sector of the Canadian economy.