Characterizing Canada’s Export Sector by Industry: A Supply-Side Perspective Staff analytical note 2018-27 Taylor Webley This note examines supply-side trends in Canadian non-energy industries and their implications for export performance. Between 2002 and 2016, capital stocks and total labour input declined in many industries that export non-energy goods. These soft trends in the factors of production have likely contributed to the decline in non-energy exports in about half of the goods industries analyzed in this note. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes JEL Code(s): E, E2, E22, E23, E24, F, F1, F19 Research Theme(s): Monetary policy, Real economy and forecasting, Structural challenges, Digitalization and productivity, International trade, finance and competitiveness
Decomposing Canada’s Market Shares: An Update Staff analytical note 2018-26 Nicholas Labelle Building on the shift-share analysis of Barnett and Charbonneau (2015), this note decomposes Canada’s market shares in the United States, Europe and China for imports of non-energy goods into competitiveness, preference shifts and an interaction term. We find that, despite the depreciation of the dollar, Canada continued to lose market share over 2014–17 (around 0.4 percentage points lost per year on average over four years). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes JEL Code(s): F, F1, F10, F14, F4 Research Theme(s): Monetary policy, Real economy and forecasting, Structural challenges, International trade, finance and competitiveness
What Is Restraining Non-Energy Export Growth? Staff analytical note 2018-25 Dany Brouillette, José Dorich, Chris D'Souza, Adrienne Gagnon, Claudia Godbout This note summarizes the key findings from Bank of Canada staff analytical work examining the reasons for the recent weakness in Canadian non-energy exports. Canada steadily lost market share in US non-energy imports between 2002 and 2017, mostly reflecting continued and broad-based competitiveness losses. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, F, F1, F10, F14, F17 Research Theme(s): Monetary policy, Real economy and forecasting, Structural challenges, International trade, finance and competitiveness
The Welfare Cost of Inflation Revisited: The Role of Financial Innovation and Household Heterogeneity Staff working paper 2018-40 Shutao Cao, Césaire Meh, José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, Yaz Terajima We document that, across households, the money consumption ratio increases with age and decreases with consumption, and that there has been a large increase in the money consumption ratio during the recent era of very low interest rates. We construct an overlapping generations (OLG) model of money holdings for transaction purposes subject to age (older households use more money), cohort (younger generations are exposed to better transaction technology), and time effects (nominal interest rates affect money holdings). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E4, E41 Research Theme(s): Monetary policy, Inflation dynamics and pressures, Real economy and forecasting
Sluggish Forecasts Staff working paper 2018-39 Monica Jain Given the influence that agents’ expectations have on key macroeconomic variables, it is surprising that very few papers have tried to extrapolate agents’ “true” expectations directly from the data. This paper presents one such approach, starting with the hypothesis that there is sluggishness in inflation and real GDP growth forecasts. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E37 Research Theme(s): Models and tools, Econometric, statistical and computational methods, Monetary policy, Inflation dynamics and pressures, Real economy and forecasting
Nowcasting Canadian Economic Activity in an Uncertain Environment Staff discussion paper 2018-9 Tony Chernis, Rodrigo Sekkel This paper studies short-term forecasting of Canadian real GDP and its expenditure components using combinations of nowcasts from different models. Starting with a medium-sized data set, we use a suite of common nowcasting tools for quarterly real GDP and its expenditure components. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E3, E37, E5, E52 Research Theme(s): Models and tools, Econometric, statistical and computational methods, Monetary policy, Real economy and forecasting
Sources of Borrowing and Fiscal Multipliers Staff working paper 2018-32 Romanos Priftis, Srecko Zimic This paper finds that debt-financed government spending multipliers vary considerably depending on the location of the debt buyer. In a sample of 33 countries, we find that government spending multipliers are larger when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to foreign investors (non-residents), compared with when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to home investors (residents). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): E, E2, E6, E62, F, F4, F41, H, H3 Research Theme(s): Models and tools, Economic models, Monetary policy, Real economy and forecasting, Structural challenges, International trade, finance and competitiveness
Reconciling Jaimovich-Rebelo Preferences, Habit in Consumption and Labor Supply Staff working paper 2018-26 Tom D. Holden, Paul Levine, Jonathan Swarbrick This note studies a form of a utility function of consumption with habit and leisure that (a) is compatible with long-run balanced growth, (b) hits a steady-state observed target for hours worked and (c) is consistent with micro-econometric evidence for the inter-temporal elasticity of substitution and the Frisch elasticity of labor supply. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E24 Research Theme(s): Models and tools, Economic models, Monetary policy, Real economy and forecasting, Structural challenges, Demographics and labour supply
Bending the Curves: Wages and Inflation Staff analytical note 2018-15 Dany Brouillette, Madigan Dockrill, Helen Lao, Laurence Savoie-Chabot As economic slack continues to be absorbed and the labour market tightens, wage growth and inflation could increase faster than expected, which would suggest convexity in their Phillips curves. This note investigates whether there is convexity in the Phillips curves for Canadian wage growth and inflation by testing different empirical approaches over the post-inflation-targeting period. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E3, E31, J, J3 Research Theme(s): Monetary policy, Inflation dynamics and pressures, Real economy and forecasting
The Political Impact of Immigration: Evidence from the United States Staff working paper 2018-19 Anna Maria Mayda, Giovanni Peri, Walter Steingress In this paper we study the impact of immigration to the United States on the vote for the Republican Party by analyzing county-level data on election outcomes between 1990 and 2010. Our main contribution is to separate the effect of high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants, by exploiting the different geography and timing of the inflows of these two groups of immigrants. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): F, F2, F22, J, J6, J61 Research Theme(s): Monetary policy, Real economy and forecasting, Structural challenges, Demographics and labour supply