Search

Since the 2016 summer survey, the results from a question on future sales indicators (FSI) have been included in the Business Outlook Survey (BOS). This backgrounder briefly describes the question and presents the correlations between the responses and various measures of business activity.

Do banks realize simultaneous trading losses because they invest in the same assets, or because different assets are subject to the same macro shocks? This paper decomposes the comovements of bank trading losses into two orthogonal channels: portfolio overlap and common shocks.

We study the impact government expenditure has on inflation. We find that changes in government expenditure account for a substantial portion of inflation variations. We also find that inflation and inflation expectations respond negatively to fiscal spending shocks, reaffirming the supply-side channel through which inflation responds to fiscal expansions.

The prevalence of entrepreneurs, particularly low-productivity non-employers, declines as economies develop. This decline is more pronounced for women. Relative to men, women are more likely to be entrepreneurs in poor economies but less likely in rich economies.

Burkart and Ellingsen's (2004) model of trade credit and bank credit rationing predicts that trade credit will be used by medium-wealth and low-wealth firms to help ease bank credit rationing.

How might one simulate a million realistic income paths and compute their statistical moments in under a second? Using CUDA-based methods to estimate the Canadian earnings process, I find that the distribution of labour income growth is sharply peaked with heavy tails—similar to that in the United States.

John Maynard Keynes said the objective of "analysis is … to provide ourselves with an organized and orderly method of thinking out particular problems .… This is the nature of economic thinking."

In two recent papers, Jensen (2002) and Walsh (2003), using a hybrid New Keynesian model, demonstrate that a regime that targets either nominal income growth or the change in the output gap can effectively replicate the outcome under commitment and hence reduce the size of the stabilization bias.

Currency crises in the 1990s, especially those in emerging markets, have sharply disrupted economic activity, affecting not only the country experiencing the crisis, but also those with trade, investment, and geographic links. The authors review the theoretical literature and empirical evidence regarding these crises. They conclude that their primary cause is a fixed nominal exchange rate combined with macroeconomic imbalances, such as current account or fiscal deficits, that the market perceives as unsustainable at the prevailing real exchange rate. They also conclude that currency crises can be prevented through the adoption of sound monetary and fiscal policies, effective regulation and supervision of the financial sector, and a more flexible nominal exchange rate.

What makes e-money more special than cash? Is the introduction of e-money necessarily welfare enhancing? Is an e-money system necessarily stable? What is the optimal way to design an efficient and stable e-money scheme?