E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

• April 2017 Annual Reassessment of Potential Output Growth in Canada

  Staff Analytical Note 2017-5 Andrew Agopsowicz, Bassirou Gueye, Natalia Kyui, Youngmin Park, Mohanad Salameh, Ben Tomlin

  This note summarizes the Bank of Canada’s annual reassessment of potential output growth, conducted for the April 2017 Monetary Policy Report. Potential output growth is projected to increase from 1.3 per cent in 2017 to 1.6 per cent by 2020.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Labour markets, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): E, E0, E00, E2, E22, E23, E24, E3, E37, E6

• Anticipated Technology Shocks: A Re‐Evaluation Using Cointegrated Technologies

  Staff Working Paper 2017-11 Joel Wagner

  Two approaches have been taken in the literature to evaluate the relative importance of news shocks as a source of business cycle volatility. The first is an empirical approach that performs a structural vector autoregression to assess the relative importance of news shocks, while the second is a structural-model-based approach.

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

• Assessing the Business Outlook Survey Indicator Using Real-Time Data

  Staff Discussion Paper 2017-5 Lise Pichette, Marie-Noëlle Robitaille

  Every quarter, the Bank of Canada conducts quarterly consultations with businesses across Canada, referred to as the Business Outlook Survey (BOS). A principal-component analysis conducted by Pichette and Rennison (2011) led to the development of the BOS indicator, which summarizes survey results and is used by the Bank as a gauge of overall business sentiment.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, C8, C82, E, E3, E37

• Optimal Capital Regulation

  Staff Working Paper 2017-6 Stéphane Moyen, Josef Schroth

  We study constrained-efficient bank capital regulation in a model with market-imposed equity requirements. Banks hold equity buffers to insure against sudden loss of access to funding. However, in the model, banks choose to only partially self-insure because equity is privately costly.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial institutions, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): E, E1, E13, E3, E32, E4, E44

• Price-Level Dispersion versus Inflation-Rate Dispersion: Evidence from Three Countries

  Staff Working Paper 2017-3 David Fielding, Christopher Hajzler, James (Jim) C. MacGee

  Inflation can affect both the dispersion of commodity-specific price levels across locations (relative price variability, RPV) and the dispersion of inflation rates (relative inflation variability, RIV). Some menu-cost models and models of consumer search suggest that the RIV-inflation relationship could differ from the RPV-inflation relationship.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, E50

• A Dynamic Factor Model for Nowcasting Canadian GDP Growth

  Staff Working Paper 2017-2 Tony Chernis, Rodrigo Sekkel

  This paper estimates a dynamic factor model (DFM) for nowcasting Canadian gross domestic product. The model is estimated with a mix of soft and hard indicators, and it features a high share of international data.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, C38, C5, C53, E, E3, E37

• Terms-of-Trade and House Price Fluctuations: A Cross-Country Study

  Staff Working Paper 2017-1 Paul Corrigan

  Terms-of-trade shocks are known to be key drivers of business cycles in open economies. This paper argues that terms-of-trade shocks were also important for house price fluctuations in a panel of developed countries over the 1994–2015 period.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Housing, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E3, E32, E5, E51, F, F3, F36, F4, F41