Volatility Risk and Economic Welfare Staff Working Paper 2017-20 Shaofeng Xu This paper examines the effects of time-varying volatility on welfare. I construct a tractable endogenous growth model with recursive preferences, stochastic volatility, and capital adjustment costs. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E2, E3
Assessing the Predictive Ability of Sovereign Default Risk on Exchange Rate Returns Staff Working Paper 2017-19 Claudia Foroni, Francesco Ravazzolo, Barbara Sadaba Increased sovereign credit risk is often associated with sharp currency movements. Therefore, expectations of the probability of a sovereign default event can convey important information regarding future movements of exchange rates. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Exchange rates, International financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, C5, C52, C53, F, F3, F31
The Welfare Effects of Protection: A General Equilibrium Analysis of Canada’s National Policy Staff Working Paper 2017-18 Patrick Alexander, Ian Keay In this paper, we study the impact of Canada’s adoption of protectionist trade policy in 1879 on Canadian welfare. Under the National Policy the Canadian average weighted tariff increased from 14% to 21%. The conventional view is that this was a distortionary policy that negatively affected Canadian welfare. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Economic models, International topics, Trade integration JEL Code(s): F, F1, F13, F14, F4, F42, F6, F60, N, N7, N71
Vertical Specialization and Gains from Trade Staff Working Paper 2017-17 Patrick Alexander Multi-stage production is widely recognized as an important feature of the modern global economy. This feature has been incorporated into many state-of-the-art quantitative trade models, and has been shown to deliver significant additional gains from international trade. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Economic models, International topics, Trade integration JEL Code(s): F, F1, F11, F14, F6, F60
Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity Meets the Zero Lower Bound Staff Working Paper 2017-16 Robert Amano, Stefano Gnocchi We add downward nominal wage rigidity to a standard New Keynesian model with sticky prices and wages, where the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates is allowed to bind. We find that wage rigidity not only reduces the frequency of zero bound episodes but also mitigates the severity of corresponding recessions. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Inflation targets, Labour markets, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E3, E32, E5, E52
Constrained Efficiency with Adverse Selection and Directed Search Staff Working Paper 2017-15 Mohammad Davoodalhosseini Constrained efficient allocation (CE) is characterized in a model of adverse selection and directed search (Guerrieri, Shimer, and Wright (2010)). CE is defined to be the allocation that maximizes welfare, the ex-ante utility of all agents, subject to the frictions of the environment. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets, Financial system regulation and policies, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, D83, E, E2, E24, G, G1, J, J3, J31, J6, J64
Strategic Complementarities and Money Market Fund Liquidity Management Staff Working Paper 2017-14 Jonathan Witmer Following the financial crisis, there has been increased regulatory focus on the management of liquidity in mutual funds and, specifically, whether funds hold enough liquidity to guard against the potential for investor runs. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial markets JEL Code(s): F, F3, F30, G, G0, G01, G1, G18, G2, G20
Markov‐Switching Three‐Pass Regression Filter Staff Working Paper 2017-13 Pierre Guérin, Danilo Leiva-Leon, Massimiliano Marcellino We introduce a new approach for the estimation of high-dimensional factor models with regime-switching factor loadings by extending the linear three-pass regression filter to settings where parameters can vary according to Markov processes. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, C23, C5, C53
Accounting for Real Exchange Rates Using Micro‐Data Staff Working Paper 2017-12 Mario J. Crucini, Anthony Landry The classical dichotomy predicts that all of the time-series variance in the aggregate real exchange rate is accounted for by non-traded goods in the consumer price index (CPI) basket because traded goods obey the Law of One Price. In stark contrast, Engel (1999) claimed the opposite: that traded goods accounted for all of the variance. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Exchange rates, International financial markets, Trade integration JEL Code(s): F, F3
Anticipated Technology Shocks: A Re‐Evaluation Using Cointegrated Technologies Staff Working Paper 2017-11 Joel Wagner Two approaches have been taken in the literature to evaluate the relative importance of news shocks as a source of business cycle volatility. The first is an empirical approach that performs a structural vector autoregression to assess the relative importance of news shocks, while the second is a structural-model-based approach. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Productivity JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32