Labour Share Fluctuations in Emerging Markets: The Role of the Cost of Borrowing Staff Working Paper 2014-47 Serdar Kabaca This paper contributes to the literature by documenting labour income share fluctuations in emerging-market economies and proposing an explanation for them. Time-series data indicate that emerging markets differ from developed markets in terms of changes in the labour share over the business cycle. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Development economics, Interest rates, International topics, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E25, E4, E44, F, F4, F41
Are There Gains from Pooling Real-Time Oil Price Forecasts? Staff Working Paper 2014-46 Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian, Thomas K. Lee The answer as to whether there are gains from pooling real-time oil price forecasts depends on the objective. The approach of combining five of the leading forecasting models with equal weights dominates the strategy of selecting one model and using it for all horizons up to two years. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, Q, Q4, Q43
On the Importance of Sales for Aggregate Price Flexibility Staff Working Paper 2014-45 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Nicolas Vincent Macroeconomists have traditionally ignored the behavior of temporary price markdowns (“sales”) by retailers. Although sales are common in the micro price data, they are assumed to be unrelated to macroeconomic phenomena and generally filtered out. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Inflation and prices, Market structure and pricing, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E32, E5, E52, L, L1, L11, L2, L25, L8, L81, M, M3, M31
The Role of Card Acceptance in the Transaction Demand for Money Staff Working Paper 2014-44 Kim Huynh, Philipp Schmidt-Dengler, Helmut Stix The use of payment cards, either debit or credit, is becoming more and more widespread in developed economies. Nevertheless, the use of cash remains significant. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital currencies and fintech, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial services JEL Code(s): C, C3, C35, C8, C83, E, E4, E41
International Transmission Channels of U.S. Quantitative Easing: Evidence from Canada Staff Working Paper 2014-43 Tatjana Dahlhaus, Abeer Reza, Kristina Hess The U.S. Federal Reserve responded to the great recession by reducing policy rates to the effective lower bound. In order to provide further monetary stimulus, they subsequently conducted large-scale asset purchases, quadrupling their balance sheet in the process. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): International topics, Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E5, E52, E58, F, F4, F42, F44
What Does the Convenience Yield Curve Tell Us about the Crude Oil Market? Staff Working Paper 2014-42 Ron Alquist, Gregory Bauer, Antonio Diez de los Rios Using the prices of crude oil futures contracts, we construct the term structure of crude oil convenience yields out to one-year maturity. The crude oil convenience yield can be interpreted as the interest rate, denominated in barrels of oil, for borrowing a single barrel of oil, and it measures the value of storing crude oil over the borrowing period. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Asset pricing, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, G, G1, G12, G13, Q, Q4, Q43
Improving Public Equity Markets? No Pain, No Gain Staff Working Paper 2014-41 Katya Kartashova This paper quantifies the effects of improving public equity markets on macroeconomic aggregates and welfare. I use an open-economy extension of Angeletos (2007), where entrepreneurs face idiosyncratic productivity risk in privately held firms. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Development economics, Financial institutions, Financial markets JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, G, G1, G11, O, O1, O11, O16
Balance Sheets of Financial Intermediaries: Do They Forecast Economic Activity? Staff Working Paper 2014-40 Rodrigo Sekkel This paper conducts a real-time, out-of-sample analysis of the forecasting power of various aggregate financial intermediaries’ balance sheets to a wide range of economic activity measures in the United States. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53
Real-Time Nowcasting of Nominal GDP Under Structural Breaks Staff Working Paper 2014-39 William A. Barnett, Marcelle Chauvet, Danilo Leiva-Leon This paper provides a framework for the early assessment of current U.S. nominal GDP growth, which has been considered a potential new monetary policy target. The nowcasts are computed using the exact amount of information that policy-makers have available at the time predictions are made. However, real-time information arrives at different frequencies and asynchronously, which poses challenges of mixed frequencies, missing data and ragged edges. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E2, E27, E3, E31, E32
A New Approach to Infer Changes in the Synchronization of Business Cycle Phases Staff Working Paper 2014-38 Danilo Leiva-Leon This paper proposes a Markov-switching framework to endogenously identify the following: (1) regimes where economies synchronously enter recessionary and expansionary phases; and (2) regimes where economies are unsynchronized, essentially following independent business cycles. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, C4, C45, E, E3, E32