Staff research

• February 28, 2019

  Research Update - February 2019

  This monthly newsletter features the latest research publications by Bank of Canada economists including external publications and working papers published on the Bank of Canada’s website.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Research newsletters

• Limiting Sender’s Information in Bayesian Persuasion

  Staff Working Paper 2019-10 Shota Ichihashi

  This paper studies how the outcome of Bayesian persuasion depends on a sender’s information. I study a game in which, prior to the sender’s information disclosure, the designer can restrict the most informative signal that the sender can generate.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, D83

• Inflation Targeting and Liquidity Traps Under Endogenous Credibility

  Staff Working Paper 2019-9 Cars Hommes, Joep Lustenhouwer

  Policy implications are derived for an inflation-targeting central bank, whose credibility is endogenous and depends on its past ability to achieve its targets. This is done in a New Keynesian framework with heterogeneous and boundedly rational expectations.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Credibility, Monetary policy JEL Code(s): C, C6, C62, E, E3, E32, E5, E52

• Liquidity Management of Canadian Corporate Bond Mutual Funds: A Machine Learning Approach

  Staff Analytical Note 2019-7 Rohan Arora, Chen Fan, Guillaume Ouellet Leblanc

  When redeeming shares for investors, bond fund managers must choose a mix of cash and bond sales to honour their commitments. This note uses machine learning algorithms to uncover new patterns in decisions fund managers make to meet redemptions.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Financial markets, Financial stability JEL Code(s): G, G1, G2, G20, G23

• The Size and Characteristics of Informal (“Gig”) Work in Canada

  Staff Analytical Note 2019-6 Olena Kostyshyna, Corinne Luu

  Underlying wage growth has fallen short of what would be consistent with an economy operating with little or no slack. While many factors could explain this weakness, the availability of additional labour resources from informal (“gig”) work—not fully captured in standard measures of employment and hours worked—may play a role.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Labour markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E26, J, J2, J20, J3, J30, J4

• Macroprudential Policy with Capital Buffers

  Staff Working Paper 2019-8 Josef Schroth

  The countercyclical capital buffer is part of Basel III, the set of regulatory measures developed in response to the financial crisis of 2007–09. This study focuses on how time-varying capital buffers can address inefficiencies in economies with endogenous financial crises.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Credit and credit aggregates, Credit risk management, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies, Lender of last resort JEL Code(s): E, E1, E13, E3, E32, E4, E44

• Inequality in Parental Transfers, Borrowing Constraints and Optimal Higher Education Subsidies

  Staff Working Paper 2019-7 Youngmin Park

  This paper studies optimal education subsidies when parental transfers are unequally distributed across students and cannot be publicly observed. After documenting substantial inequality in parental transfers among US college students with similar family resources, I examine its implications for how the education subsidy should vary with schooling level and family resources to minimize inefficiencies generated by borrowing constraints.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D1, D14, D6, D61, D64, D8, D82, I, I2, I22, J, J2, J24

• Crypto ‘Money’: Perspective of a Couple of Canadian Central Bankers

  Staff Discussion Paper 2019-1 James Chapman, Carolyn A. Wilkins

  The market for cryptoassets has exploded in size in the 10 years since bitcoin was launched. The technology underlying cryptoassets, blockchain, has also been held up as a technology that promises to transform entire industries.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital currencies and fintech, Financial services, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): E, E4, E41, E42, E5, E51, E58, H, H4, P, P4, P43

• Canada’s Monetary Policy Report: If Text Could Speak, What Would It Say?

  Staff Analytical Note 2019-5 André Binette, Dmitri Tchebotarev

  This note analyzes the evolution of the narrative in the Bank of Canada’s Monetary Policy Report (MPR). It presents descriptive statistics on the core text, including length, most frequently used words and readability level—the three Ls. Although each Governor of the Bank of Canada focuses on the macroeconomic events of the day and the mandate of inflation targeting, we observe that the language used in the MPR varies somewhat from one Governor’s tenure to the next.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Central bank research, Monetary policy JEL Code(s): E, E0, E02, E5, E52