Econometric and statistical methods
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October 20, 2006
MUSE: The Bank of Canada's New Projection Model of the U.S. Economy
Staff projections provided for the Bank of Canada's monetary policy decision process take into account the integration of Canada's very open economy within the global economy, as well as its close real and financial linkages with the United States. To provide inputs for this projection, the Bank has developed several models, including MUSE, NEUQ (the New European Quarterly Model), and BoC-GEM (Bank of Canada Global Economy Model), to analyze and forecast economic developments in the rest of the world. The authors focus on MUSE, the model currently used to describe interaction among the principal U.S. economic variables, including gross domestic product, inflation, interest rates, and the exchange rate. Brief descriptions are also provided of NEUQ and BoC-GEM. -
Assessing and Valuing the Non-Linear Structure of Hedge Fund Returns
Several studies have put forward the non-linear structure and option-like features of returns associated with hedge fund strategies. -
The Turning Black Tide: Energy Prices and the Canadian Dollar
The authors revisit the relationship between energy prices and the Canadian dollar in the Amano and van Norden (1995) equation, which shows a negative relationship such that higher real energy prices lead to a depreciation of the Canadian dollar. -
Estimation of the Default Risk of Publicly Traded Canadian Companies
Two models of default risk are prominent in the financial literature: Merton's structural model and Altman's non-structural model. -
Can Affine Term Structure Models Help Us Predict Exchange Rates?
The author proposes an arbitrage-free model of the joint behaviour of interest and exchange rates whose exchange rate forecasts outperform those produced by a random-walk model, a vector autoregression on the forward premiums and the rate of depreciation, and the standard forward premium regression. -
Using Monthly Indicators to Predict Quarterly GDP
The authors build a model for predicting current-quarter real gross domestic product (GDP) growth using anywhere from zero to three months of indicators from that quarter. -
Risk-Cost Frontier and Collateral Valuation in Securities Settlement Systems for Extreme Market Events
The authors examine how the use of extreme value theory yields collateral requirements that are robust to extreme fluctuations in the market price of the asset used as collateral. -
Forecasting Commodity Prices: GARCH, Jumps, and Mean Reversion
Fluctuations in the prices of various natural resource products are of concern in both policy and business circles; hence, it is important to develop accurate price forecasts. -
The Federal Reserve's Dual Mandate: A Time-Varying Monetary Policy Priority Index for the United States
In the United States, the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate of promoting stable inflation and maximum employment. Since the Fed directly controls only one instrument - the federal funds rate - the authors argue that the Fed's priorities continuously alternate between inflation and economic activity.