This paper explores how the Canadian futures market contributed to banks’ systemic risk during the 2008 financial crisis. It finds that core banks as a whole traded against the periphery, in this way increasing their risk of simultaneous losses.
Although the number of job applications has risen, job-finding rates remain relatively unchanged while job-separation rates have significantly declined. Rather than raising the probability of finding a job, we find that a rise in applications raises the probability of finding a good match, as evidenced by the decline in separation rates.
Measuring labour market slack is essential for central banks: without full employment in the economy, inflation will not stay close to target. We propose a comprehensive approach to assessing labour market slack that reflects the complexity and diversity of the labour market.
We document a new empirical finding in the foreign exchange market: currency returns show systematic reversals around the benchmark fixings. Specifically, the US dollar, on average, appreciates in the hours before fixes and depreciates after fixes.
Carbon dioxide emissions have been commonly modelled as rising and falling with total output. Yet many factors, such as energy-efficiency improvements and shifts to cleaner energy, can break this relationship. We evaluate these factors using US data and find that changes in energy efficiency of consumption goods explain a significant proportion of emissions fluctuations. This finding also implies that models that omit energy efficiency likely overestimate the trade-off between environmental protection and economic performance.