E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

• November 19, 2015

  A Survey of Consumer Expectations for Canada

  Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2015 Marc-André Gosselin, Mikael Khan

  The Bank of Canada recently launched a quarterly survey to measure the expectations of Canadian households: the Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations (CSCE). The data collected provide comprehensive information about consumer expectations for and uncertainty about inflation, the labour market and household finance. This article describes the CSCE and illustrates its potential to offer rich information about Canadian consumers for researchers and policy-makers.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Central bank research, Housing, Inflation and prices, Interest rates, Labour markets, Monetary policy and uncertainty JEL Code(s): D, D1, D12, D8, D84, E, E3, E31, E5, E52, J, J0
• November 19, 2015

  Measuring Durable Goods and Housing Prices in the CPI: An Empirical Assessment

  Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2015 Patrick Sabourin, Pierre Duguay

  While the CPI is the most commonly used measure to track inflation, it is not fully consistent with a true cost-of-living index (COLI). Although the official treatment of durable goods and housing in the CPI represents an acceptable compromise in the current environment of low and stable inflation, Sabourin and Duguay suggest that it would be worthwhile to consider treating housing and durables in the same way and bringing the actual CPI closer to a COLI. This could be accomplished by employing an enhanced user-cost approach to calculate the imputed cost of the services provided by the use of durable goods or housing.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, E52

• Nowcasting BRIC+M in Real Time

  Staff Working Paper 2015-38 Tatjana Dahlhaus, Justin-Damien Guénette, Garima Vasishtha

  Emerging-market economies have become increasingly important in driving global GDP growth over the past 10 to 15 years. This has made timely and accurate assessment of current and future economic activity in emerging markets important for policy-makers not only in these countries but also in advanced economies.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C3, C33, C5, C53, E, E3, E37

• A Comprehensive Evaluation of Measures of Core Inflation for Canada

  Staff Discussion Paper 2015-12 Mikael Khan, Louis Morel, Patrick Sabourin

  This paper evaluates the usefulness of various measures of core inflation for the conduct of monetary policy. Traditional exclusion-based measures of core inflation are found to perform relatively poorly across a range of evaluation criteria, in part due to their inability to filter unanticipated transitory shocks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, E52

• Exchange Rate Pass-Through to Consumer Prices: Theory and Recent Evidence

  Staff Discussion Paper 2015-9 Laurence Savoie-Chabot, Mikael Khan

  In an open economy such as Canada’s, exchange rate movements can have a material impact on consumer prices. This is particularly important in the current context, with the significant depreciation of the Canadian dollar vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar since late 2012.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, E52, F, F3, F31

• The Endogenous Relative Price of Investment

  Staff Working Paper 2015-30 Joel Wagner

  This paper takes a full-information model-based approach to evaluate the link between investment-specific technology and the inverse of the relative price of investment. The two-sector model presented includes monopolistic competition where firms can vary the markup charged on their product depending on the number of firms competing.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, L, L1, L11, L16

• Model Averaging in Markov-Switching Models: Predicting National Recessions with Regional Data

  Staff Working Paper 2015-24 Pierre Guérin, Danilo Leiva-Leon

  This paper introduces new weighting schemes for model averaging when one is interested in combining discrete forecasts from competing Markov-switching models. In particular, we extend two existing classes of combination schemes – Bayesian (static) model averaging and dynamic model averaging – so as to explicitly reflect the objective of forecasting a discrete outcome.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E3, E32, E37

• Revisiting the Macroeconomic Impact of Oil Shocks in Asian Economies

  Staff Working Paper 2015-23 Juncal Cunado, Soojin Jo, Fernando Perez de Gracia

  This paper analyzes the macroeconomic impact of oil shocks in four of the largest oil-consuming Asian economies, using a structural vector autoregressive model. We identify three different types of oil shocks via sign restrictions: an oil supply shock, an oil demand shock driven by global economic activity and an oil-specific demand shock.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, O, O5, O53, Q, Q4, Q43

• Productive Misallocation and International Transmission of Credit Shocks

  Staff Working Paper 2015-19 Yuko Imura, Julia Thomas

  We develop an asymmetric, two-country equilibrium business cycle model to study the role of international trade in transmitting and propagating the real effects of global financial shocks. Our model predicts that a recession in a large economy considerably alters a recession in its smaller trade partner, with distinct investment dynamics driving the transmission.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Financial markets, Financial stability, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E2, E22, E3, E32, E4, E44, F, F4, F41, F44
• May 14, 2015

  Inflation Dynamics in the Post-Crisis Period

  Bank of Canada Review - Spring 2015 Christian Friedrich, Marc-André Gosselin

  Inflation rates in advanced economies experienced two consecutive puzzles during the period following the global financial crisis—unexpectedly high inflation from the end of 2009 to 2011 and unexpectedly low inflation from 2012 to the middle of 2014. We investigate these developments in two ways. First, we show that accounting for inflation expectations by households explains a significant share of the inflation puzzles at the international level. Second, we find that, for Canada, elevated competition in the retail sector is also important for understanding inflation dynamics in the post-crisis period.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Inflation and prices, International topics, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, F, F4, F41