Staff research

• September 30, 2020

  Research Update - September 2020

  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

• Interbank Asset-Liability Networks with Fire Sale Management

  Staff Working Paper 2020-41 Zachary Feinstein, Grzegorz Halaj

  Raising liquidity when funding is stressed creates pressure on the financial market. Liquidating large quantities of assets depresses their prices and may amplify funding shocks. How do banks weathering a funding crisis contribute to contagion risk?

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C6, C62, C63, C7, C72, G, G0, G01, G1, G11

• Forward Guidance and Expectation Formation: A Narrative Approach

  Staff Working Paper 2020-40 Christopher S. Sutherland

  How exactly does forward guidance influence interest rate expectations?

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Monetary policy, Monetary policy communications, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): D, D8, D83, D84, E, E3, E37, E5, E52, E58

• The New Benchmark for Forecasts of the Real Price of Crude Oil

  Staff Working Paper 2020-39 Amor Aniss Benmoussa, Reinhard Ellwanger, Stephen Snudden

  How can we assess the quality of a forecast? We propose a new benchmark to evaluate forecasts of temporally aggregated series and show that the real price of oil is more difficult to predict than we thought.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C1, C5, C53, Q, Q4, Q47

• Cyclicality of Schooling: New Evidence from Unobserved Components Models

  Staff Working Paper 2020-38 Barbara Sadaba, Sunčica Vujič, Sofia Maier

  What is the time-varying impact of economic cycles on decisions to invest in human capital?

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E3, I, I2, J, J2

• Predicting Payment Migration in Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2020-37 Anneke Kosse, Zhentong Lu, Gabriel Xerri

  Developments are underway to replace Canada’s two core payment systems with three new systems. We use a discrete choice model to predict migration patterns of end-users and financial institutions for future systems and discuss their policy implications.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial services, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C3, E, E4, E42, G, G1, G2, G28

• Child Skill Production: Accounting for Parental and Market-Based Time and Goods Investments

  Staff Working Paper 2020-36 Elizabeth Caucutt, Lance Lochner, Joseph Mullins, Youngmin Park

  Can daycare replace parents’ time spent with children? We explore this by using data on how parents spend time and money on children and how this spending is related to their child’s development.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy, Labour markets, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D1, D13, H, H3, H31, J, J2, J22, J24

• What do high-frequency expenditure network data reveal about spending and inflation during COVID‑19?

  Staff Analytical Note 2020-20 Kim Huynh, Helen Lao, Patrick Sabourin, Angelika Welte

  The official consumer price index (CPI) inflation measure, based on a fixed basket set before the COVID 19 pandemic, may not fully reflect what consumers are currently experiencing. We partnered with Statistics Canada to construct a more representative index for the pandemic with weights based on real-time transaction and survey data.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): D, D1, D12, E, E3, E31, E4, E42, E5, E52

• The Canadian corporate investment gap

  Staff Analytical Note 2020-19 Chris D'Souza, Timothy Grieder, Daniel Hyun, Jonathan Witmer

  Business investment has been lower than expected in Canada and abroad since the financial crisis of 2007–09. This corporate investment gap is mirrored in firms’ other financing decisions, as they have increased cash holdings and dividend payments and decreased issuance of debt and equity.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Firm dynamics, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): D, D2, D22, D9, D92, G, G3, G31, G32

• Liquidity Usage and Payment Delay Estimates of the New Canadian High Value Payments System

  Staff Discussion Paper 2020-9 Francisco Rivadeneyra, Nellie Zhang

  As part of modernizing its core payments infrastructure, Canada will replace the Large Value Transfer System (LVTS) with a new Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system called Lynx. An important question for policy-makers is how Lynx should be designed.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Financial services, Financial system regulation and policies, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C5, E, E4, E42, E5, E58