Staff working papers

Conventional wisdom holds that institutional changes and trade liberalization are two main sources of growth in per capita income around the world.

From 1870 to 2000, the workweek length of employed persons decreased by 41 per cent in industrialized countries.

The authors examine how the use of extreme value theory yields collateral requirements that are robust to extreme fluctuations in the market price of the asset used as collateral.

Changes in investors' risk appetite have been used to explain a variety of phenomena in asset markets.

Operational events in the Large Value Transfer System (LVTS) almost always result in a disturbance of the regular flow of payments.

Fluctuations in the prices of various natural resource products are of concern in both policy and business circles; hence, it is important to develop accurate price forecasts.

How can policy-makers avoid large policy errors when they are uncertain about the true model of the economy?

The authors analyze the welfare implications of simple monetary policy rules in the context of an estimated model of a small open economy for Canada with traded and non-traded goods, and with sticky prices and wages.

In the United States, the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate of promoting stable inflation and maximum employment. Since the Fed directly controls only one instrument - the federal funds rate - the authors argue that the Fed's priorities continuously alternate between inflation and economic activity.

The author provides a statistical evaluation of various measures of core inflation for Canada.