E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics

• Eggs in One Basket: Security and Convenience of Digital Currencies

  Staff Working Paper 2021-6 Charles M. Kahn, Francisco Rivadeneyra, Tsz-Nga Wong

  Digital currencies store balances in anonymous electronic addresses. This paper analyzes the trade-offs between the safety and convenience of aggregating balances in addresses, electronic wallets and banks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Digital currencies and fintech, Financial services, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): E, E4, E42, E5, E51, E58

• (Optimal) Monetary Policy with and without Debt

  Staff Working Paper 2021-5 Boris Chafwehé, Rigas Oikonomou, Romanos Priftis, Lukas Vogel

  How should policy be designed at high debt levels, when fiscal authorities have little room to adjust taxes? Assigning the monetary authority a role in achieving debt sustainability makes it less effective in stabilizing inflation and output.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Fiscal policy, Monetary policy, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): C, C1, C11, E, E3, E31, E5, E52, E58, E6, E62

• Networking the Yield Curve: Implications for Monetary Policy

  Staff Working Paper 2021-4 Tatjana Dahlhaus, Julia Schaumburg, Tatevik Sekhposyan

  We study how different monetary policies affect the yield curve and interact. Our study highlights the importance of the spillover structure across the yield curve for policy-making.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Interest rates, Monetary policy implementation JEL Code(s): C, C1, C18, C2, C21, C5, C53, E, E4, E43, E44, E5, E52

• Chinese Monetary Policy and Text Analytics: Connecting Words and Deeds

  Staff Working Paper 2021-3 Jeannine Bailliu, Xinfen Han, Barbara Sadaba, Mark Kruger

  What are the main drivers behind the monetary policy reaction function of the People’s Bank of China?

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics, Monetary policy communications, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): C, C6, C63, E, E5, E52, E58

• Qualitative Field Research in Monetary Policy Making

  Staff Discussion Paper 2021-1 Chris D'Souza, Jane Voll

  Central banks conduct research involving in-depth interviews with external parties—but little is known about how this information affects monetary policy. We address this gap by analyzing open-ended interviews with senior central bank economic and policy staff who work closely with policy decision-makers.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Monetary policy, Monetary policy and uncertainty JEL Code(s): C, C8, C83, E, E3, E37, E5, E52

• Using Payments Data to Nowcast Macroeconomic Variables During the Onset of COVID-19

  Staff Working Paper 2021-2 James Chapman, Ajit Desai

  We use retail payment data in conjunction with machine learning techniques to predict the effects of COVID-19 on the Canadian economy in near-real time. We find this approach yields a significant increase in forecasting precision over a linear benchmark model. This model can help policy-makers before official data are released.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, C55, E, E3, E37, E4, E42, E5, E52

• Allocative Efficiency and Aggregate Productivity Growth in Canada and the United States

  Staff Working Paper 2021-1 Lin Shao, Rongsheng Tang

  The lack of improvement in allocative efficiency plays a quantitatively important role in the productivity slowdown in the United States and the widening Canada–US productivity gap.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Productivity JEL Code(s): C, C6, C67, D, D4, D5, D57, E, E2, E23

• Consumer Credit with Over-optimistic Borrowers

  Staff Working Paper 2020-57 Florian Exler, Igor Livshits, James (Jim) C. MacGee, Michèle Tertilt

  When lenders cannot directly identify behavioural and rational borrowers, they use type scoring to track the likelihood of a borrower’s type. This leads to the partial pooling of borrowers, which results in rational borrowers subsidizing borrowing costs for behavioural borrowers. This, in turn, reduces the effectiveness of regulatory policies that target mistakes by behavioural borrowers.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Credit risk management, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E4, E49, G, G1, G18, K, K3, K35

• Losing Contact: The Impact of Contactless Payments on Cash Usage

  Staff Working Paper 2020-56 Marie-Hélène Felt

  Because they mimic desirable features of cash and are typically used for smaller-value transactions, contactless payment cards are a competitive alternative to cash. This study investigates whether contactless credit cards are an important contributor to the decline in the transactional usage of cash, using Canadian panel data between 2010 and 2017.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital currencies and fintech, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial services JEL Code(s): C, C3, C33, D, D1, D12, E, E4, E41

• Implementation and Effectiveness of Extended Monetary Policy Tools: Lessons from the Literature

  Staff Discussion Paper 2020-16 Grahame Johnson, Sharon Kozicki, Romanos Priftis, Lena Suchanek, Jonathan Witmer, Jing Yang

  This paper summarizes the literature on the performance of various extended monetary policy tools when conventional policy rates are constrained by the effective lower bound. We highlight issues that may arise when these tools are used by central banks of small open economies.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Monetary policy, Monetary policy implementation, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E58, E6, E63