Staff Working Papers
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Uncovered Return Parity: Equity Returns and Currency Returns
We propose an uncovered expected returns parity (URP) condition for the bilateral spot exchange rate. URP implies that unilateral exchange rate equations are misspecified and that equity returns also affect exchange rates. Fama regressions provide evidence that URP is statistically preferred to uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) for nominal bilateral exchange rates between the US dollar and six countries (Australia, Canada, Japan, Norway, Switzerland and the UK) at the monthly frequency. -
Analysis of Asymmetric GARCH Volatility Models with Applications to Margin Measurement
We explore properties of asymmetric generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models in the threshold GARCH (GTARCH) family and propose a more general Spline-GTARCH model, which captures high-frequency return volatility, low-frequency macroeconomic volatility as well as an asymmetric response to past negative news in both autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH) and GARCH terms. -
The (Un)Demand for Money in Canada
A novel dataset from the Bank of Canada is used to estimate the deposit functions for banknotes in Canada for three denominations: $1,000, $100 and $50. The broad flavour of the empirical findings is that denominations are different monies, and the structural estimates identify the underlying sources of the non-neutrality. -
The Political Impact of Immigration: Evidence from the United States
In this paper we study the impact of immigration to the United States on the vote for the Republican Party by analyzing county-level data on election outcomes between 1990 and 2010. Our main contribution is to separate the effect of high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants, by exploiting the different geography and timing of the inflows of these two groups of immigrants. -
Housing Price Network Effects from Public Transit Investment: Evidence from Vancouver
In this paper, we estimate the effect on housing prices of the expansion of the Vancouver SkyTrain rapid transit network during the period 2001–11. We extend the canonical residential sorting equilibrium framework to include commuting time in the household utility function. -
Could a Higher Inflation Target Enhance Macroeconomic Stability?
Recent international experience with the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates has rekindled interest in the benefits of inflation targets above 2 per cent. We evaluate whether an increase in the inflation target to 3 or 4 per cent could improve macroeconomic stability in the Canadian economy. -
Order Flow Segmentation, Liquidity and Price Discovery: The Role of Latency Delays
Latency delays—known as “speed bumps”—are an intentional slowing of order flow by exchanges. Supporters contend that delays protect market makers from high-frequency arbitrage, while opponents warn that delays promote “quote fading” by market makers. We construct a model of informed trading in a fragmented market, where one market operates a conventional order book and the other imposes a latency delay on market orders. -
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. -
State Correlation and Forecasting: A Bayesian Approach Using Unobserved Components Models
Implications for signal extraction from specifying unobserved components (UC) models with correlated or orthogonal innovations have been well investigated. In contrast, the forecasting implications of specifying UC models with different state correlation structures are less well understood. -
Did U.S. Consumers Respond to the 2014–2015 Oil Price Shock? Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey
The impact of oil price shocks on the U.S. economy is a topic of considerable debate. In this paper, we examine the response of U.S. consumers to the 2014–2015 negative oil price shock using representative survey data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey.