Pierre St-Amant - Latest
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The Productivity Slowdown in Canada: An ICT Phenomenon?
We ask whether a weaker contribution of information and communication technologies (ICT) to productivity growth could account for the productivity slowdown observed in Canada since the early 2000s. To answer this question, we consider several methods capturing channels through which ICT could affect aggregate productivity growth. -
Firm Dynamics and Multifactor Productivity: An Empirical Exploration
There are indications that business dynamism has declined in advanced economies. In particular, firm entry and exit rates have fallen, suggesting that the creative destruction process has lost some of its vitality. Meanwhile, productivity growth has slowed. Some believe that lower entry and exit rates partly explain the weaker productivity growth. -
Dismiss the Gap? A Real-Time Assessment of the Usefulness of Canadian Output Gaps in Forecasting Inflation
We use a new real-time database for Canada to study various output gap measures. This includes recently developed measures based on models incorporating many variables as inputs (and therefore requiring real-time data for many variables). -
Credit Conditions and Consumption, House Prices and Debt: What Makes Canada Different?
There is widespread agreement that, in the United States, higher house prices raise consumption via collateral or possibly wealth effects. The presence of similar channels in Canada would have important implications for monetary policy transmission. -
Financial Stress, Monetary Policy, and Economic Activity
This paper examines empirically the impact of financial stress on the transmission of monetary policy shocks in Canada. The model used is a threshold vector autoregression in which a regime change occurs if financial stress conditions cross a critical threshold. -
Quantity, Quality, and Relevance: Central Bank Research, 1990–2003
The authors document the research output of 34 central banks from 1990 to 2003, and use proxies of research inputs to measure the research productivity of central banks over this period. -
Canada's Exchange Rate Regime and North American Economic Integration: The Role of Risk-Sharing Mechanisms
Our contribution in this paper is threefold. First, we survey the empirical literature on consumption smoothing mechanisms of regional economic shocks. Second, building on the work of Asdrubali et al. (1996), we present evidence on the role played by various smoothing mechanisms for specific economic shocks affecting Canadian provinces. Third, we assess whether smoothing mechanisms […] -
Optimal Currency Areas: A Review of the Recent Literature
This paper surveys the recent literature on optimal currency areas (OCAs). Topics that are covered include theoretical developments in the context of general-equilibrium models and empirical work on shocks asymmetry and adjustment mechanisms. Issues relating to the endogeneity of OCA criteria, the role of exchange rate flexibility in promoting greater macroeconomic stability, and the links […] -
Résultats empiriques multi-pays relatifs à l'impact des cibles d'inflation sur la crédibilité de la politique monétaire
Over the last few years, many countries have adopted inflation targets. The objective of this paper is to report some empirical results that bear on the link between the adoption of inflation targets and the behaviour of the main macroeconomic variables. After a discussion of some recent articles analyzing international experience, some simple statistical tests […]