Business fluctuations and cycles

• November 17, 2011

  Extracting Information from the Business Outlook Survey: A Principal-Component Approach

  Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2011 Lise Pichette, Lori Rennison

  This article reviews recent work that uses principal-component analysis to extract information common to indicators from the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey (BOS). The authors use correlation analysis and an out-of-sample forecasting exercise to assess and compare the information content of the principal component with that of responses to key individual survey questions on growth in real gross domestic product and in real business investment. Results suggest that summarizing the common movements among BOS indicators may provide useful information for forecasting near-term growth in business investment. For growth in real gross domestic product, however, the survey’s balance of opinion on future sales growth appears to be more informative.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Regional economic developments

• Inventories, Markups and Real Rigidities in Sticky Price Models of the Canadian Economy

  Staff Working Paper 2011-9 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Virgiliu Midrigan

  Recent New Keynesian models of macroeconomy view nominal cost rigidities, rather than nominal price rigidities, as the key feature that accounts for the observed persistence in output and inflation. Kryvtsov and Midrigan (2010a,b) reassess these conclusions by combining a theory based on nominal rigidities and storable goods with direct evidence on inventories for the U.S.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, F, F1, F12

• The Impact of the Global Business Cycle on Small Open Economies: A FAVAR Approach for Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2011-2 Garima Vasishtha, Philipp Maier

  Building on the growing evidence on the importance of large data sets for empirical macroeconomic modeling, we use a factor-augmented VAR (FAVAR) model with more than 260 series for 20 OECD countries to analyze how global developments affect the Canadian economy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, F, F4, F41

• Financial Spillovers Across Countries: The Case of Canada and the United States

  Staff Discussion Paper 2011-1 Kimberly Beaton, Brigitte Desroches

  The authors investigate financial spillovers across countries with an emphasis on the effect of shocks to financial conditions in the United States on financial conditions and economic activity in Canada. These questions are addressed within a global vector autoregression model.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Financial stability, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E2, E27, E3, E32, F, F3, F36, F4, F40