May 17, 2012
E31 - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
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Time-Varying Effects of Oil Supply Shocks on the U.S. Economy
We use vector autoregressions with drifting coefficients and stochastic volatility to investigate how the dynamic effects of oil supply shocks on the U.S. economy have changed over time. We find a substantial decline in the short-run price elasticity of oil demand since the mid-eighties. -
The Role of Time-Varying Price Elasticities in Accounting for Volatility Changes in the Crude Oil Market
There has been a systematic increase in the volatility of the real price of crude oil since 1986, followed by a decline in the volatility of oil production since the early 1990s. We explore reasons for this evolution. We show that a likely explanation of this empirical fact is that both the short-run price elasticities of oil demand and of oil supply have declined considerably since the second half of the 1980s. -
Money and Price Posting under Private Information
We study price posting with undirected search in a search-theoretic monetary model with divisible money and divisible goods. Ex ante homogeneous buyers experience match specific preference shocks in bilateral trades. The shocks follow a continuous distribution and the realization of the shocks is private information. -
The Behaviour of Consumer Prices Across Provinces
Measures of core inflation enable a central bank to distinguish price movements that are transitory and generated by non-monetary events from those that are more permanent and related to prior monetary policy decisions. -
Inventories, Markups and Real Rigidities in Sticky Price Models of the Canadian Economy
Recent New Keynesian models of macroeconomy view nominal cost rigidities, rather than nominal price rigidities, as the key feature that accounts for the observed persistence in output and inflation. Kryvtsov and Midrigan (2010a,b) reassess these conclusions by combining a theory based on nominal rigidities and storable goods with direct evidence on inventories for the U.S. -
Semi-Structural Models for Inflation Forecasting
We propose alternative single-equation semi-structural models for forecasting inflation in Canada, whereby structural New Keynesian models are combined with time-series features in the data. Several marginal cost measures are used, including one that in addition to unit labour cost also integrates relative price shocks known to play an important role in open-economies. -
Inventories in ToTEM
ToTEM – the Bank of Canada’s principal projection and policy-analysis model for the Canadian economy – is extended to include inventories. In the model, firms accumulate inventories of finished goods for their role in facilitating the demand for goods. -
Inventories, Stockouts, and ToTEM
Inventory investment is an important component of the Canadian business cycle. Despite its small average size – less than 1 per cent of output – it exhibits volatile procyclical fluctuations, accounting for almost one-third of output variance. -
Real and Nominal Frictions within the Firm: How Lumpy Investment Matters for Price Adjustment
Real rigidities are an important feature of modern sticky price models and are policy-relevant because of their welfare consequences, but cannot be structurally identified from time series. I evaluate the plausibility of capital specificity as a source of real rigidities using a two-dimensional generalized (s,S) model calibrated to micro evidence.