C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods
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Testing the Pricing-to-Market Hypothesis: Case of the Transportation Equipment Industry
Pricing-to-market (PTM) theory suggests that monopolistic firms which export adjust their destination-specific markups in reaction to exchange rate shocks. These adjustments limit changes in the price of their exports. -
Non-Parametric and Neural Network Models of Inflation Changes
Previous studies have shown that interest rate yield spreads contain useful information about future changes in inflation. However, such studies have for the most part focused on linear models, ignoring potential non-linearities between interest rates and inflation. -
Some Explorations, Using Canadian Data, of the S-Variable in Akerlof, Dickens, and Perry (1996)
A number of authors have suggested that economies face a long-run inflation-unemployment trade-off due to downward nominal-wage rigidity. This theory has implications for the nature of the short-run Phillips curve when wage inflation is low. -
Estimating the Fractional Order of Integration of Interest Rates Using a Wavelet OLS Estimator
The debate on the order of integration of interest rates has long focused on the I(1) versus I(0) distinction. In this paper, we use instead the wavelet OLS estimator of Jensen (1999) to estimate the fractional integration parameters of several interest rates for the United States and Canada from 1948 to 1999. -
Long-Term Determinants of the Personal Savings Rate: Literature Review and Some Empirical Results for Canada
This paper examines the structural determinants of the personal savings rate in Canada over the last 30 years, using cointegration techniques. The main finding is that the real interest rate, expected inflation, the ratio of the all-government fiscal balances to nominal GDP, and the ratio of household net worth to personal disposable income are the most […] -
GAUSS™ Programs for the Estimation of State-Space Models with ARCH Errors: A User's Guide
State-space models have long been popular in explaining the evolution of various economic variables. This is mainly because they generally have more economic content than do others in their class of parsimonious models (for example, VARs). Yet, in spite of their advantages, use of these models until recently was limited by the assumption that all […] -
The Employment Costs of Downward Nominal-Wage Rigidity
In this paper, we use firm-level wage and employment data to address whether there is evidence of downward nominal-wage rigidity, and whether that rigidity is associated with a reduction in employment. We describe an estimation bias that can result when estimating reduced-form wage and employment equations and suggest a way of controlling for that bias. […] -
Pricing Interest Rate Derivatives in a Non-Parametric Two-Factor Term-Structure Model
Diffusion functions in term-structure models are measures of uncertainty about future price movements and are directly related to the risk associated with holding financial securities. Correct specification of diffusion functions is crucial in pricing options and other derivative securities. In contrast to the standard parametric two-factor models, we propose a non-parametric two-factor term-structure model that […] -
Estimating One-Factor Models of Short-Term Interest Rates
There currently exists in the literature several continuous-time one-factor models for short-term interest rates. This paper considers a wide range of these models that are nested into one general model. These models are approximated using both a discrete-time model and a model that accounts for aggregation effects over time, and are estimated by both the […]