November 17, 2016 Commodity Price Supercycles: What Are They and What Lies Ahead? Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2016 Bahattin Buyuksahin, Kun Mo, Konrad Zmitrowicz Because commodity prices help determine Canada’s terms of trade, employment, income and, ultimately, inflation, it is important to understand what causes them to fluctuate. Since the early 1900s, there have been four commodity price supercycles—which we define as extended periods of boom and bust that can take decades to complete. Now in its downswing phase, the current supercycle started after growth in China and other emerging-market economies in the mid-1990s resulted in an unexpected demand shock. The extent of this downswing depends on numerous factors that are presently uncertain. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C1, Q, Q1, Q4, Q41
Household Risk Assessment Model Technical Report No. 106 Brian Peterson, Tom Roberts Household debt can be an important source of vulnerability to the financial system. This technical report describes the Household Risk Assessment Model (HRAM) that has been developed at the Bank of Canada to stress test household balance sheets at the individual level. Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Research Topic(s): Financial stability, Housing, Sectoral balance sheet JEL Code(s): C, C0, C6, C63, C65, D, D0, D1, D14
The Impact of Macroprudential Housing Finance Tools in Canada: 2005–10 Staff Working Paper 2016-41 Jason Allen, Timothy Grieder, Brian Peterson, Tom Roberts This paper combines loan-level administrative data with household-level survey data to analyze the impact of recent macroprudential policy changes in Canada using a microsimulation model of mortgage demand of first-time homebuyers. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): C, C6, C63, D, D1, D14, G, G2, G28
Assessment of the Effects of Macroprudential Tightening in Canada Staff Analytical Note 2016-12 Martin Kuncl During the period of 2008 to 2012, the rules for government-backed mortgage insurance were tightened on four occasions. In this note, we estimate the effects through a simple econometric exercise using a vector error-correction model (VECM). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Research Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial system regulation and policies, Housing JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E6, E65, G, G2, G28
Are Counterparty Arrangements in Reinsurance a Threat to Financial Stability? Staff Working Paper 2016-39 Matt Davison, Darrell Leadbetter, Bin Lu, Jane Voll Interconnectedness among insurers and reinsurers at a global level is not well understood and may pose a significant risk to the sector, with implications for the macroeconomy. Models of the complex interactions among reinsurers and with other participants in the financial system and the real economy are at a very early stage of development. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial services, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): C, C6, C63, G, G1, G10, G15, G18, G2, G22, G28
Credit Risk and Collateral Demand in a Retail Payment System Staff Discussion Paper 2016-16 Héctor Pérez Saiz, Gabriel Xerri The recent financial crisis has led to the development of new regulations to control risk in designated payment systems, and the implementation of new credit risk management standards is one of the key issues. In this paper, we study various credit risk management schemes for the Canadian retail payment system (ACSS) that are designed to cover the exposure of a defaulting member. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C5, C58, G, G2, G21, G23
The Real-Time Properties of the Bank of Canada’s Staff Output Gap Estimates Staff Working Paper 2016-28 Julien Champagne, Guillaume Poulin-Bellisle, Rodrigo Sekkel We study the revision properties of the Bank of Canada’s staff output gap estimates since the mid-1980s. Our results suggest that the average staff output gap revision has decreased significantly over the past 15 years, in line with recent evidence for the U.S. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Central bank research, Econometric and statistical methods, Potential output JEL Code(s): C, C3, C38, E, E1, E17, E3, E32
What Are the Macroeconomic Effects of High-Frequency Uncertainty Shocks Staff Working Paper 2016-25 Laurent Ferrara, Pierre Guérin This paper evaluates the effects of high-frequency uncertainty shocks on a set of low-frequency macroeconomic variables that are representative of the U.S. economy. Rather than estimating models at the same common low-frequency, we use recently developed econometric models, which allows us to deal with data of different sampling frequencies. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E3, E32, E4, E44
Housing and Tax-Deferred Retirement Accounts Staff Working Paper 2016-24 Anson T. Y. Ho, Jie Zhou Assets in tax-deferred retirement accounts (TDA) and housing are two major components of household portfolios. In this paper, we develop a life-cycle model to examine the interaction between households’ use of TDA and their housing decisions. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Economic models, Housing JEL Code(s): C, C6, C61, D, D1, D14, D9, D91, E, E2, E21, H, H2, H24, R, R2, R21
Identification and Estimation of Risk Aversion in First-Price Auctions with Unobserved Auction Heterogeneity Staff Working Paper 2016-23 Serafin Grundl, Yu Zhu This paper shows point identification in first-price auction models with risk aversion and unobserved auction heterogeneity by exploiting multiple bids from each auction and variation in the number of bidders. The required exclusion restriction is shown to be consistent with a large class of entry models. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C1, C14, C5, C57, D, D4, D44, L, L0, L00