February 21, 2013 The U.S. Recovery from the Great Recession: A Story of Debt and Deleveraging Bank of Canada Review - Winter 2012-2013 Brady Lavender, Nicolas Parent The U.S. recovery from the Great Recession has been slow relative to other postwar-era recoveries in the United States. Encouraged by loose lending standards in the pre-crisis period, U.S. households took on unsustainable amounts of debt, making them vulnerable to adverse shocks. Subsequently, a considerable drop in asset prices forced households to repair their balance sheets. While there has been progress in household deleveraging, the government sector now needs to delever, which will restrain growth over the next few years. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, International topics, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E6, E60
Extracting Information from the Business Outlook Survey Using Statistical Approaches Staff Discussion Paper 2012-8 Lise Pichette Since the autumn of 1997, the regional offices of the Bank of Canada have conducted quarterly consultations with businesses across Canada. These consultations, summarized in the Business Outlook Survey (BOS), are structured around a survey questionnaire that covers topics of importance to the Bank, notably business activity, pressures on production capacity, prices and inflation, and credit conditions. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): C, C4, C43, C8, C82, E, E3, E37
The Effects of Oil Price Uncertainty on the Macroeconomy Staff Working Paper 2012-40 Soojin Jo This paper investigates the effect of oil price uncertainty on real economic activity using a quarterly VAR with stochastic volatility in mean. Stochastic volatility allows oil price uncertainty to vary separately from changes in the level of oil prices, and thus the impact of oil price uncertainty can be examined in a more flexible yet tractable way. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E3, E32, Q, Q4, Q43
The Role of Credit in International Business Cycles Staff Working Paper 2012-36 TengTeng Xu This paper examines the role of bank credit in modeling and forecasting business cycle fluctuations, and investigates the international transmission of US credit shocks, using a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) framework and associated country-specific error correction models. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Credit and credit aggregates, Econometric and statistical methods, International financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E3, E32, E4, E44, G, G2, G21
Financial Conditions and the Money-Output Relationship in Canada Staff Working Paper 2012-33 Maral Kichian We propose a drifting-coefficient model to empirically study the effect of money on output growth in Canada and to examine the role of prevailing financial conditions for that relationship. We show that such a time-varying approach can be a useful way of modelling the impact of money on growth, and can partly reconcile the lack of concensus in the literature on the question of whether money affects growth. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Credit and credit aggregates, Monetary aggregates JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, E5, E51
China’s Emergence in the World Economy and Business Cycles in Latin America Staff Working Paper 2012-32 Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi, M. Hashem Pesaran, Alessandro Rebucci, TengTeng Xu The international business cycle is very important for Latin America’s economic performance as the recent global crisis vividly illustrated. This paper investigates how changes in trade linkages between China, Latin America, and the rest of the world have altered the transmission mechanism of international business cycles to Latin America. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, International topics, Recent economic and financial developments, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E3, E32, F, F4, F44, O, O5, O54
International Business Cycles and Financial Frictions Staff Working Paper 2012-19 Wen Yao This paper builds a two-country DSGE model to study the quantitative impact of financial frictions on business cycle co-movements when investors have foreign asset exposure. The investor in each country holds capital in both countries and faces a leverage constraint on her debt. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, International financial markets, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E30, F, F4, F42, F44
Fooled by Search: Housing Prices, Turnover and Bubbles Staff Working Paper 2012-3 Brian Peterson his paper develops and estimates a model to explain the behaviour of house prices in the United States. The main finding is that over 70% of the increase in house prices relative to trend during the increase of house prices in the United States from 1995 to 2006 can be explained by a pricing mechanism where market participants are ‘Fooled by Search.’ Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Business fluctuations and cycles JEL Code(s): E, E3, R, R2, R21
November 17, 2011 Extracting Information from the Business Outlook Survey: A Principal-Component Approach Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2011 Lise Pichette, Lori Rennison This article reviews recent work that uses principal-component analysis to extract information common to indicators from the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey (BOS). The authors use correlation analysis and an out-of-sample forecasting exercise to assess and compare the information content of the principal component with that of responses to key individual survey questions on growth in real gross domestic product and in real business investment. Results suggest that summarizing the common movements among BOS indicators may provide useful information for forecasting near-term growth in business investment. For growth in real gross domestic product, however, the survey’s balance of opinion on future sales growth appears to be more informative. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Regional economic developments
Inventories, Markups and Real Rigidities in Sticky Price Models of the Canadian Economy Staff Working Paper 2011-9 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Virgiliu Midrigan Recent New Keynesian models of macroeconomy view nominal cost rigidities, rather than nominal price rigidities, as the key feature that accounts for the observed persistence in output and inflation. Kryvtsov and Midrigan (2010a,b) reassess these conclusions by combining a theory based on nominal rigidities and storable goods with direct evidence on inventories for the U.S. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, F, F1, F12