E2 - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment

• Real and Nominal Frictions within the Firm: How Lumpy Investment Matters for Price Adjustment

  Staff Working Paper 2009-36 Michael K. Johnston

  Real rigidities are an important feature of modern sticky price models and are policy-relevant because of their welfare consequences, but cannot be structurally identified from time series. I evaluate the plausibility of capital specificity as a source of real rigidities using a two-dimensional generalized (s,S) model calibrated to micro evidence.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E1, E12, E2, E22, E3, E31

• Consumption, Housing Collateral, and the Canadian Business Cycle

  Staff Working Paper 2009-26 Ian Christensen, Paul Corrigan, Caterina Mendicino, Shin-Ichi Nishiyama

  Using Bayesian methods, we estimate a small open economy model in which consumers face limits to credit determined by the value of their housing stock. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the role of collateralized household debt in the Canadian business cycle.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Credit and credit aggregates, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E3, E32, E4, E44, E5, E52, R, R2, R21

• Credit Constraints and Consumer Spending

  Staff Working Paper 2009-25 Kimberly Beaton

  This paper examines the relationship between aggregate consumer spending and credit availability in the United States. The author finds that consumer spending falls (rises) in response to a reduction (increase) in credit availability.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Domestic demand and components, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E27, E4, E44, E5, E51, E58

• Household Debt, Assets, and Income in Canada: A Microdata Study

  Staff Discussion Paper 2009-7 Césaire Meh, Yaz Terajima, David Xiao Chen, Thomas J. Carter

  The authors use microdata from the 1999 and 2005 Surveys of Financial Security to identify changes in household debt, and discuss their potential implications for monetary policy and financial stability. They document an increase in the debt-income ratio, which rose from 0.75 to 0.95, on average.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial stability, Productivity, Sectoral balance sheet JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E24

• Real Effects of Price Stability with Endogenous Nominal Indexation

  Staff Working Paper 2009-16 Césaire Meh, Vincenzo Quadrini, Yaz Terajima

  We study a model with repeated moral hazard where financial contracts are not fully indexed to inflation because nominal prices are observed with delay as in Jovanovic & Ueda (1997).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets, Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E3, E31, E4, E44, E5, E52

• Labour Shares and the Role of Capital and Labour Market Imperfections

  Staff Discussion Paper 2009-2 Lena Suchanek

  In continental Europe, labour shares in national income have exhibited considerable variation since 1970. Empirical and theoretical research suggests that the evolution of labour markets and labour market imperfections can, in part, explain this phenomenon.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial institutions, Labour markets JEL Code(s): C, C7, C78, E, E2, E25, J, J6, J64

• What Accounts for the U.S.-Canada Education-Premium Difference?

  Staff Working Paper 2009-4 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Alexander Ueberfeldt

  This paper analyzes the differences in wage ratios of university graduates to less than university graduates, the education premium, in Canada and the United States from 1980 to 2000. Both countries experienced a similar increase in the fraction of university graduates and a similar increase in skill biased technological change based on capital-embodied technological progress, but only the United States had a large increase in the education premium.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets, Productivity JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E25, J, J2, J24, J3, J31

• Uninsurable Investment Risks and Capital Income Taxation

  Staff Working Paper 2009-3 Césaire Meh, Yaz Terajima

  This paper studies the capital accumulation and welfare implications of reducing capital income taxation in a general equilibrium economy with uninsurable investment risks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E22, E6, E62, G, G3, G32, H, H2, H24, H25