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

• Consumer Credit with Over-optimistic Borrowers

  Staff Working Paper 2020-57 Florian Exler, Igor Livshits, James (Jim) C. MacGee, Michèle Tertilt

  When lenders cannot directly identify behavioural and rational borrowers, they use type scoring to track the likelihood of a borrower’s type. This leads to the partial pooling of borrowers, which results in rational borrowers subsidizing borrowing costs for behavioural borrowers. This, in turn, reduces the effectiveness of regulatory policies that target mistakes by behavioural borrowers.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Credit risk management, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E4, E49, G, G1, G18, K, K3, K35

• Labor Market Policies During an Epidemic

  Staff Working Paper 2020-54 Serdar Birinci, Fatih Karahan, Yusuf Mercan, Kurt See

  We study the labour market and welfare effects of expanding unemployment insurance benefits and introducing payroll subsidies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that both policies are complementary and are beneficial to different types of workers. Payroll subsidies preserve the employment of workers in highly productive jobs, while unemployment insurance replaces lost income for workers who experience inevitable job loss.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Fiscal policy, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E6, E62, J, J6, J64

• Towards a HANK Model for Canada: Estimating a Canadian Income Process

  Staff Discussion Paper 2020-13 Iskander Karibzhanov

  How might one simulate a million realistic income paths and compute their statistical moments in under a second? Using CUDA-based methods to estimate the Canadian earnings process, I find that the distribution of labour income growth is sharply peaked with heavy tails—similar to that in the United States.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Economic models, Labour markets JEL Code(s): D, D3, D31, E, E2, E24, J, J3, J31

• The Heterogeneous Effects of COVID-19 on Canadian Household Consumption, Debt and Savings

  Staff Working Paper 2020-51 James (Jim) C. MacGee, Thomas Michael Pugh, Kurt See

  The impact of COVID-19 on Canadian households’ debt and unplanned savings varies by household income. Low-income and high-income households accrued unplanned savings, while middle-income households tended to accumulate more debt.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Financial stability JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E24, G, G5, G51

• Assessing Global Potential Output Growth: October 2020

  Staff Discussion Paper 2020-10 Xin Scott Chen, Ali Jaffery, Guillaume Nolin, Karim Salhab, Peter Shannon, Subrata Sarker

  This paper presents updated estimates of potential output growth for the global economy through 2022. Global potential output growth is expected to decline sharply in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and recover partially by the end of the projection horizon of the October 2020 Monetary Policy Report.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): E, E1, E10, E2, E20, O, O4

• How Should Unemployment Insurance Vary over the Business Cycle?

  Staff Working Paper 2020-47 Serdar Birinci, Kurt See

  Should unemployment benefits be more generous during economic downturns? The optimal amount and duration of benefit payments ultimately depend on the demographic and wealth characteristics of benefit recipients.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Fiscal policy, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E3, E32, J, J6, J64, J65

• Potential output in Canada: 2020 reassessment

  Staff Analytical Note 2020-25 Dany Brouillette, Julien Champagne, Julien McDonald-Guimond

  After COVID-19, we expect potential output growth to stabilize around 1.2 percent. This is lower than the 2010–18 average growth of 1.8 percent. Relative to the April 2019 reassessment, the growth profile is revised down. Given the unknown course of the pandemic, uncertainty around these estimates is higher than in previous years.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Labour markets, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): E, E0, E00, E2, E23, E24, E3, E37, E6

• Household indebtedness risks in the wake of COVID‑19

  Staff Analytical Note 2020-8 Olga Bilyk, Anson T. Y. Ho, Mikael Khan, Geneviève Vallée

  COVID-19 presents challenges for indebted households. We assess these by drawing parallels between pandemics and natural disasters. Taking into account the financial health of the household sector when the pandemic began, we run model simulations to illustrate how payment deferrals and the labour market recovery will affect mortgage defaults.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Climate change, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Credit and credit aggregates, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability, Fiscal policy, Housing, Recent economic and financial developments, Sectoral balance sheet JEL Code(s): C, C2, C21, D, D1, D12, D14, E, E2, E24, E27, E6, E62, G, G2, G21, G28, R, R2

• Identifying Aggregate Shocks with Micro-level Heterogeneity: Financial Shocks and Investment Fluctuation

  Staff Working Paper 2020-17 Xing Guo

  This paper identifies aggregate financial shocks and quantifies their effects on business investment based on an estimated DSGE model with firm-level heterogeneity. On average, financial shocks contribute only 3% of the variation in U.S. public firms’ aggregate investment.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Firm dynamics JEL Code(s): E, E1, E12, E2, E22, G, G3, G31, G32

• Optimal Taxation in Asset Markets with Adverse Selection

  Staff Working Paper 2020-11 Mohammad Davoodalhosseini

  What is the optimal tax schedule in over-the-counter markets, e.g., those for corporate bonds? I find that an optimal tax schedule is often non-monotonic. For example, trading of some high-price assets should be subsidized, and trading of some low-price assets should be taxed.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets, Financial system regulation and policies, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, D83, E, E2, E24, G, G1, G10, J, J3, J31, J6, J64