Econometric and statistical methods
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Filling in the Blanks: Network Structure and Interbank Contagion
The network pattern of financial linkages is important in many areas of banking and finance. Yet bilateral linkages are often unobserved, and maximum entropy serves as the leading method for estimating counterparty exposures. -
Improving Overnight Loan Identification in Payments Systems
Information on the allocation and pricing of over-the-counter (OTC) markets is scarce. Furfine (1999) pioneered an algorithm that provides transaction-level data on the OTC interbank lending market. -
Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing: Using the Least Squares Criterion for Quantile Estimation
Estimation of the quantile model, especially with a large data set, can be computationally burdensome. This paper proposes using the Gaussian approximation, also known as quantile coupling, to estimate a quantile model. -
Monetary Policy Transmission during Financial Crises: An Empirical Analysis
This paper studies the effects of a monetary policy expansion in the United States during times of high financial stress. The analysis is carried out by introducing a smooth transition factor model where the transition between states (“normal” and high financial stress) depends on a financial conditions index. -
Consumer Cash Usage: A Cross-Country Comparison with Payment Diary Survey Data
We measure consumers’ use of cash by harmonizing payment diary surveys from seven countries. The seven diary surveys were conducted in 2009 (Canada), 2010 (Australia), 2011 (Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands), and 2012 (the United States). -
May 13, 2014
The Art and Science of Forecasting the Real Price of Oil
Forecasts of the price of crude oil play a significant role in the conduct of monetary policy, especially for commodity producers such as Canada. This article presents a range of recently developed forecasting models that, when pooled together, can generate, on average, more accurate forecasts of the price of oil than the oil futures curve. It also illustrates how policy-makers can evaluate the risks associated with the baseline oil price forecast and how they can determine the causes of past oil price fluctuations. -
Multiple Fixed Effects in Binary Response Panel Data Models
This paper considers the adaptability of estimation methods for binary response panel data models to multiple fixed effects. It is motivated by the gravity equation used in international trade, where important papers such as Helpman, Melitz and Rubinstein (2008) use binary response models with fixed effects for both importing and exporting countries. -
Do High-Frequency Financial Data Help Forecast Oil Prices? The MIDAS Touch at Work
The substantial variation in the real price of oil since 2003 has renewed interest in the question of how to forecast monthly and quarterly oil prices. There also has been increased interest in the link between financial markets and oil markets, including the question of whether financial market information helps forecast the real price of oil in physical markets. -
Regime Switches in the Risk-Return Trade-Off
This paper deals with the estimation of the risk-return trade-off. We use a MIDAS model for the conditional variance and allow for possible switches in the risk-return relation through a Markov-switching specification.