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

• The Role of Corporate Saving over the Business Cycle: Shock Absorber or Amplifier?

  Staff Working Paper 2018-59 Xiaodan Gao, Shaofeng Xu

  We document countercyclical corporate saving behavior with the degree of countercyclicality varying nonmonotonically with firm size. We then develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms to explain the pattern and study its implications for business cycles.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E2, E20, E22, E3, E32, G, G3, G31, G32

• Fundamental Drivers of Existing Home Sales in Canada

  Staff Discussion Paper 2018-16 Taylor Webley

  Existing home sales’ share of Canada’s economic pie has been rising in recent years, and variation around this trend has resulted in outsized contributions to changes in real gross domestic product (GDP). In this context, we use a cointegration framework to estimate the level of resale activity across the Canadian provinces that is supported by fundamentals—namely, full-time employment, housing affordability and migration flows—to help look through the volatility.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models, Housing JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, C23, E, E2, E27, R, R2, R21

• Modelling the Macrofinancial Effects of a House Price Correction in Canada

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-36 Thibaut Duprey, Xuezhi Liu, Cameron MacDonald, Maarten van Oordt, Sofia Priazhkina, Xiangjin Shen, Joshua Slive

  We use a suite of risk-assessment models to examine the possible impact of a hypothetical house price correction, centred in the Toronto and Vancouver areas. We also assume financial stress significantly amplifies the macroeconomic impact of the house price decline.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial stability, Housing JEL Code(s): E, E2, E27, E3, E37, E4, E44, G, G2, G21

• The Framework for Risk Identification and Assessment

  Technical Report No. 113 Cameron MacDonald, Virginie Traclet

  Risk assessment models are an important component of the Bank’s analytical tool kit for assessing the resilience of the financial system. We describe the Framework for Risk Identification and Assessment (FRIDA), a suite of models developed at the Bank of Canada to quantify the impact of financial stability risks to the broader economy and a range of financial system participants (households, businesses and banks).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Economic models, Financial institutions, Financial stability, Housing JEL Code(s): C, C3, C5, C6, C7, D, D1, E, E0, E00, E2, E27, E3, E37, E4, E47, G, G0, G2, G21

• Disaggregating Household Sensitivity to Monetary Policy by Expenditure Category

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-32 Tony Chernis, Corinne Luu

  Because the Bank of Canada has started withdrawing monetary stimulus, monitoring the transmission of these changes to monetary policy will be important. Subcomponents of consumption and housing will likely respond differently to a monetary policy tightening, both in terms of the aggregate effect and timing.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Domestic demand and components, Econometric and statistical methods, Housing, Interest rates, Monetary policy transmission, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E2, E21, E22, E4, E43, E47, E5, E52

• Characterizing Canada’s Export Sector by Industry: A Supply-Side Perspective

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-27 Taylor Webley

  This note examines supply-side trends in Canadian non-energy industries and their implications for export performance. Between 2002 and 2016, capital stocks and total labour input declined in many industries that export non-energy goods. These soft trends in the factors of production have likely contributed to the decline in non-energy exports in about half of the goods industries analyzed in this note.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): International topics, Productivity JEL Code(s): E, E2, E22, E23, E24, F, F1, F19

• The Welfare Cost of Inflation Revisited: The Role of Financial Innovation and Household Heterogeneity

  Staff Working Paper 2018-40 Shutao Cao, Césaire Meh, José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, Yaz Terajima

  We document that, across households, the money consumption ratio increases with age and decreases with consumption, and that there has been a large increase in the money consumption ratio during the recent era of very low interest rates. We construct an overlapping generations (OLG) model of money holdings for transaction purposes subject to age (older households use more money), cohort (younger generations are exposed to better transaction technology), and time effects (nominal interest rates affect money holdings).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation: costs and benefits JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E4, E41

• Sources of Borrowing and Fiscal Multipliers

  Staff Working Paper 2018-32 Romanos Priftis, Srecko Zimic

  This paper finds that debt-financed government spending multipliers vary considerably depending on the location of the debt buyer. In a sample of 33 countries, we find that government spending multipliers are larger when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to foreign investors (non-residents), compared with when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to home investors (residents).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Debt management, Economic models, Fiscal policy, International financial markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E6, E62, F, F4, F41, H, H3

• Reconciling Jaimovich-Rebelo Preferences, Habit in Consumption and Labor Supply

  Staff Working Paper 2018-26 Tom D. Holden, Paul Levine, Jonathan Swarbrick

  This note studies a form of a utility function of consumption with habit and leisure that (a) is compatible with long-run balanced growth, (b) hits a steady-state observed target for hours worked and (c) is consistent with micro-econometric evidence for the inter-temporal elasticity of substitution and the Frisch elasticity of labor supply.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E24

• Bending the Curves: Wages and Inflation

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-15 Dany Brouillette, Madigan Dockrill, Helen Lao, Laurence Savoie-Chabot

  As economic slack continues to be absorbed and the labour market tightens, wage growth and inflation could increase faster than expected, which would suggest convexity in their Phillips curves. This note investigates whether there is convexity in the Phillips curves for Canadian wage growth and inflation by testing different empirical approaches over the post-inflation-targeting period.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E3, E31, J, J3