E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
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Sources of pandemic-era inflation in Canada: an application of the Bernanke and Blanchard model
We explore the drivers of the surge in inflation in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. This work is part of a joint effort by 11 central banks using the model developed by Bernanke and Blanchard (2023) to identify similarities and differences across economies. -
Markups and Inflation in Oligopolistic Markets: Evidence from Wholesale Price Data
We study how the interaction of market power and nominal price rigidity influences inflation dynamics. We find that pass-through declines with price stickiness when markets are concentrated, which implies a lower slope of the New Keynesian Phillips curve. -
Potential output in Canada: 2024 assessment
We expect that potential output in Canada will grow by 2.3% and 2.5% in 2023 and 2024, respectively, and average slightly below 1.7% by 2027 as population growth moderates. Relative to the April 2023 assessment, growth is revised up in 2024, with a larger contribution from trend labour input due to higher-than-anticipated population growth. We revise down our estimates of growth over 2025–26. -
Pricing behaviour and inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic: Insights from consumer prices microdata
Using the microdata underlying the Canadian consumer price index, we study how often and by how much firms changed their prices during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the surge in inflation was mainly associated with retailers raising prices much more often than before. We also find that more recently, corporate price-setting behaviour appears to be approaching pre-pandemic norms. -
Forecasting Recessions in Canada: An Autoregressive Probit Model Approach
We forecast recessions in Canada using an autoregressive (AR) probit model. The results highlight the short-term predictive power of the US economic activity and suggest that financial indicators are reliable predictors of Canadian recessions. In addition, the suggested model meaningfully improves the ability to forecast Canadian recessions, relative to a variety of probit models proposed in the Canadian literature. -
How Do Agents Form Macroeconomic Expectations? Evidence from Inflation Uncertainty
The uncertainty regarding inflation that is observed in density forecasts of households and professionals helps macroeconomists understand the formation mechanism of inflation expectations. Shocks to inflation take time to be perceived by all agents in the economy, and such rigidity is lower in a high-inflation environment.