E24 - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital
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Towards a HANK Model for Canada: Estimating a Canadian Income Process
How might one simulate a million realistic income paths and compute their statistical moments in under a second? Using CUDA-based methods to estimate the Canadian earnings process, I find that the distribution of labour income growth is sharply peaked with heavy tails—similar to that in the United States. -
The Heterogeneous Effects of COVID-19 on Canadian Household Consumption, Debt and Savings
The impact of COVID-19 on Canadian households’ debt and unplanned savings varies by household income. Low-income and high-income households accrued unplanned savings, while middle-income households tended to accumulate more debt. -
How Should Unemployment Insurance Vary over the Business Cycle?
Should unemployment benefits be more generous during economic downturns? The optimal amount and duration of benefit payments ultimately depend on the demographic and wealth characteristics of benefit recipients. -
Potential output in Canada: 2020 reassessment
After COVID-19, we expect potential output growth to stabilize around 1.2 percent. This is lower than the 2010–18 average growth of 1.8 percent. Relative to the April 2019 reassessment, the growth profile is revised down. Given the unknown course of the pandemic, uncertainty around these estimates is higher than in previous years. -
Household indebtedness risks in the wake of COVID‑19
COVID-19 presents challenges for indebted households. We assess these by drawing parallels between pandemics and natural disasters. Taking into account the financial health of the household sector when the pandemic began, we run model simulations to illustrate how payment deferrals and the labour market recovery will affect mortgage defaults. -
Optimal Taxation in Asset Markets with Adverse Selection
What is the optimal tax schedule in over-the-counter markets, e.g., those for corporate bonds? I find that an optimal tax schedule is often non-monotonic. For example, trading of some high-price assets should be subsidized, and trading of some low-price assets should be taxed.