Econometric and statistical methods
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Understanding Firms’ Inflation Expectations Using the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey
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. -
Macroeconomic Uncertainty Through the Lens of Professional Forecasters
We analyze the evolution of macroeconomic uncertainty in the United States, based on the forecast errors of consensus survey forecasts of different economic indicators. Comprehensive information contained in the survey forecasts enables us to capture a real-time subjective measure of uncertainty in a simple framework. -
Debt Overhang and Deleveraging in the US Household Sector: Gauging the Impact on Consumption
Using a novel dataset for the US states, this paper examines whether household debt and the protracted debt deleveraging help explain the dismal performance of US consumption since 2007, in the aftermath of the housing bubble. -
Exchange Rate Fluctuations and Labour Market Adjustments in Canadian Manufacturing Industries
We estimate the link between exchange rate fluctuations and the labour input of Canadian manufacturing industries. The analysis is based on a dynamic model of labour demand, and the econometric strategy employs a panel two-step approach for cointegrating regressions. -
Nowcasting BRIC+M in Real Time
Emerging-market economies have become increasingly important in driving global GDP growth over the past 10 to 15 years. This has made timely and accurate assessment of current and future economic activity in emerging markets important for policy-makers not only in these countries but also in advanced economies. -
October 27, 2015
Inflation Targeting—A Matter of Time
Deputy Governor Tim Lane discusses monetary policy decision making and how the Bank assesses the underlying trend in inflation. -
Domestic and Multilateral Effects of Capital Controls in Emerging Markets
Using a novel data set on capital control actions in 17 emerging-market economies (EMEs) over the period 2001–11, we provide new evidence on domestic and multilateral (or spillover) effects of capital controls. -
Heterogeneity in the Dynamic Effects of Uncertainty on Investment
How does aggregate profit uncertainty influence investment activity at the firm level? We propose a parsimonious adaptation of a factor-autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model to exploit information in a subindustry sales panel for an efficient and tractable estimation of aggregate volatility. -
Model Averaging in Markov-Switching Models: Predicting National Recessions with Regional Data
This paper introduces new weighting schemes for model averaging when one is interested in combining discrete forecasts from competing Markov-switching models. In particular, we extend two existing classes of combination schemes – Bayesian (static) model averaging and dynamic model averaging – so as to explicitly reflect the objective of forecasting a discrete outcome.