Staff working papers

The linkages between inflation and the economy's cyclical position are thought to be strongly affected by the credibility of monetary authorities.

In a recent paper, Chang, Gomes, and Schorfheide (2002) extend the standard real business cycle (RBC) model to allow for a learning-by-doing (LBD) mechanism whereby current labour supply affects future productivity.

The authors provide some of the first empirical evidence on labour market adjustments to exchange rate movements in Canadian manufacturing industries.

The authors measure the economies of scale of Canada's six largest banks and their costefficiency over time. Using a unique panel data set from 1983 to 2003, they estimate pooled translog cost functions and derive measures of relative efficiency and economies of scale.

Using industry-level data for Canadian manufacturing industries from 1981 to 1997, the authors find empirical evidence of a negative relationship between the capital-labour ratio and the user cost of capital relative to the price of labour.

The author develops a theoretical model of bank closure. The regulatory decision about bank failure consists of two parts: whether to close and how to close.

In a search model of production, where agents accumulate heterogeneous amounts of human capital, an individual worker's wage depends on average human capital in the searching population.

The authors examine the ability of economic models with regime shifts to rationalize and explain the risk-aversion and pricing-kernel puzzles put forward in Jackwerth (2000).

The authors document the recent evolution of the self-employment rate in Canada. Between 1987 and 1998, the self-employment rate rose 3.5 percentage points from 13.8 per cent to 17.3 per cent.

The difference between actual borrowings and borrowing limits alone generates information asymmetry in the credit card market.