Alternative Public Spending Rules and Output Volatility Staff Working Paper 2002-37 Jean-Paul Lam, William Scarth One of the central lessons learned from the Great Depression was that adjusting government spending each year to balance the budget increases the volatility of output. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Fiscal policy, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E58, E6, E62
Inflation Expectations and Learning about Monetary Policy Staff Working Paper 2002-30 David Andolfatto, Scott Hendry, Kevin Moran Various measures indicate that inflation expectations evolve sluggishly relative to actual inflation. In addition, they often fail conventional tests of unbiasedness. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E4, E47, E5, E52, E58
Financial Structure and Economic Growth: A Non-Technical Survey Staff Working Paper 2002-24 Veronika Dolar, Césaire Meh There is a large body of literature that studies the relationship between financial structure (that is, the degree to which the financial system is either market- or intermediary-based) and long-run economic growth. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Development economics, Economic models, Financial institutions, Financial markets, Financial services JEL Code(s): F, F3, F36, G, G0, G00, G1, G14, G2, G21, K, K2, K22, O, O1, O16
August 19, 2002 Models in Policy-Making Bank of Canada Review - Summer 2002 Donald Coletti, Stephen Murchison This article examines another strategy in the Bank's approach to dealing with an uncertain world: the use of carefully articulated models to produce economic forecasts and to examine the implications of the various risks to those forecasts. Economic models are deliberate simplifications of a complex world that allow economists to make predictions that are reasonably accurate and that can be easily understood and communicated. By using several models, based on competing paradigms, the Bank minimizes policy errors that could result from relying on one view of the world and one philosophy of model design. The authors review some of the models currently used at the Bank, as well as the role of judgment in the projection process. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Economic models
The Usefulness of Consumer Confidence Indexes in the United States Staff Working Paper 2002-22 Brigitte Desroches, Marc-André Gosselin This paper assesses the usefulness of consumer confidence indexes in forecasting aggregate consumer spending in the United States. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Domestic demand and components, Economic models, International topics JEL Code(s): D, D1, D12, E, E2, E21, E27
Entrepreneurial Risk, Credit Constraints, and the Corporate Income Tax: A Quantitative Exploration Staff Working Paper 2002-21 Césaire Meh This paper describes the positive effect that corporate income tax has on capital formation in the presence of liquidity constraints and uninsurable risk. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Fiscal policy JEL Code(s): D, D3, D31, E, E6, E62, H, H2, H20, H23
Evaluating the Quarterly Projection Model: A Preliminary Investigation Staff Working Paper 2002-20 Robert Amano, Kim McPhail, Hope Pioro, Andrew Rennison This paper summarizes the results of recent research evaluating the Bank of Canada's Quarterly Projection Model (QPM). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, E, E1, E17, E3, E30, E37
Estimates of the Sticky-Information Phillips Curve for the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom Staff Working Paper 2002-19 Hashmat Khan, Zhenhua Zhu Mankiw and Reis (2001a) have proposed a "sticky-information"-based Phillips curve (SIPC) to address some of the concerns with the "sticky-price"-based new Keynesian Phillips curve. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31
Estimated DGE Models and Forecasting Accuracy: A Preliminary Investigation with Canadian Data Staff Working Paper 2002-18 Kevin Moran, Veronika Dolar This paper applies the hybrid dynamic general-equilibrium, vector autoregressive (DGE-VAR) model developed by Ireland (1999) to Canadian time series. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E37
Entrepreneurship, Inequality, and Taxation Staff Working Paper 2002-14 Césaire Meh This paper confirms the conjecture that the evaluation of tax policy leads to very different conclusions once the role of entrepreneurs is considered. Contrary to previous literature, the author finds that switching from a progressive to a proportional income tax system has a negligible effect on wealth inequality in the United States. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Fiscal policy JEL Code(s): D, D3, D31, E, E6, E62, H, H2, H20, H23