Alexander Ueberfeldt is a Senior Policy Director in the Canadian Economic Analysis Department. As a member of the senior leadership team, he helps to oversee the Bank's analysis of the Canadian economy and its research on monetary policy. He also leads the efforts to better understand how structural changes affect the Canadian economy. Prior to this, he was the Senior Managing Research Advisor leading the Heterogeneity Laboratory at the Bank of Canada.
An applied macroeconomist, Alexander’s research recently focused on the interaction of monetary policy and household heterogeneity as well as financial stability. In addition, he has contributed to the understanding of price-level targeting, the risk-taking channel of monetary policy and long-run trends in macro-labour economics. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota.
This paper studies how financial shocks shape the distribution of output growth by introducing a quantile-augmented vector autoregression (QAVAR), which integrates quantile regressions into a structural VAR framework. The QAVAR preserves standard shock identification while delivering flexible, nonparametric forecasts of conditional moments and tail risk measures for gross domestic product.
The theory that rich economic diversity of businesses and households both affects and is shaped by economy-wide fluctuations has strong implications for monetary policy. This review places these insights in a Canadian context.
Financial sector bailouts, while potentially beneficial during a crisis, might lead to excessive risk taking if anticipated. Taking expectations and aggregate risk implications into account, we show that bailouts can be welfare improving, but only if capital adequacy constraints are sufficiently tight.
Using a structural model, we study the economic consequences of the COVID-19 shock. The uneven consequences, such as higher unemployment among young households, amplify the negative implications for the macroeconomy, household vulnerabilities and consumption inequality. Government support programs have stimulated the economy and lowered inequality and medium-term vulnerabilities.
Monetary policy in the presence of nominal debt and labour supply heterogeneity creates a policy trade-off: a short-term economic stimulus leads to persistently reduced output over the medium term. Price-level targeting weakens this trade-off and is better able to stabilize inflation and output than inflation targeting.
Can central bank and government policies impact the risks around the outlook for GDP growth? We find that fiscal stimulus makes strong GDP growth more likely—even more so when monetary policy is constrained—rather than weak GDP growth less likely. Thus, fiscal stimulus should accelerate the recovery phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This report examines detailed data on home mortgages to provide a better understanding of the vulnerabilities associated with the mortgage market. The proportion of low-ratio mortgages is growing, particularly in regions with strong house price growth. Moreover, these borrowers exhibit less flexibility to adverse shocks, since they have high debt levels relative to income and have taken mortgages with long amortization periods.
