E32 - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
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Are Bank Bailouts Welfare Improving?
Financial sector bailouts, while potentially beneficial during a crisis, might lead to excessive risk taking if anticipated. Taking expectations and aggregate risk implications into account, we show that bailouts can be welfare improving, but only if capital adequacy constraints are sufficiently tight. -
Energy Efficiency and Fluctuations in CO2 Emissions
Carbon dioxide emissions have been commonly modelled as rising and falling with total output. Yet many factors, such as energy-efficiency improvements and shifts to cleaner energy, can break this relationship. We evaluate these factors using US data and find that changes in energy efficiency of consumption goods explain a significant proportion of emissions fluctuations. This finding also implies that models that omit energy efficiency likely overestimate the trade-off between environmental protection and economic performance. -
More Money for Some: The Redistributive Effects of Open Market Operations
I use a search-theoretic model of money to study how open market operations affect the conduct of monetary policy and what this means for households along the wealth distribution. In the model, households vary in the size and composition of their portfolios, which in turn implies that they may be unevenly affected by open market operations. -
From He-Cession to She-Stimulus? The Labor Market Impact of Fiscal Policy Across Gender
The effects of fiscal policy shocks on labour market outcomes across gender depend on the type of public expenditure. Women benefit most from increases in the government wage bill, while men are the main beneficiaries of higher investment spending. -
Fiscal Spillovers: The Case of US Corporate and Personal Income Taxes
How do changes to personal and corporate income tax rates in the United States affect its trading partners? Spillover effects from cuts in the two taxes differ. They are generally small and negative for corporate taxes, but sizable and positive for personal income taxes. -
The Anatomy of Sentiment-Driven Fluctuations
We show that changes in sentiment that aren’t related to fundamentals can drive persistent macroeconomic fluctuations even when all economic agents are rational. Changes in sentiment can also affect how fundamental shocks affect macroeconomic outcomes. -
Small and smaller: How the economic outlook of small firms relates to size
Firms with fewer than 100 workers employ about 65 percent of the total labour force in Canada. An online survey experiment was conducted with firms of this size in Canada in 2018–19. We compare the responses of small and micro firms to explore how their characteristics and economic outlooks relate to their size. -
Can regulating bank capital help prevent and mitigate financial downturns?
Countercyclical capital buffers are regulatory measures developed in response to the global financial crisis of 2008–09. This note focuses on how time-varying capital buffers can improve financial stability in Canada -
Imperfect Banking Competition and Macroeconomic Volatility: A DSGE Framework
How do banks adjust their loan rate markup in response to macroeconomic shocks?