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 Research 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 Research 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 Research 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 Research 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 Research 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 Research 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 Research Topic(s): Economic models, Fiscal policy JEL Code(s): D, D3, D31, E, E6, E62, H, H2, H20, H23
Taylor Rules in the Quarterly Projection Model Staff Working Paper 2002-1 Ben Fung, Dinah Maclean, Jamie Armour In recent years, there has been a lot of interest in Taylor-type rules. Evidence in the literature suggests that Taylor-type rules are optimal in a number of models and are fairly robust across different models. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Economic models, Monetary policy and uncertainty, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52
New Phillips Curve with Alternative Marginal Cost Measures for Canada, the United States, and the Euro Area Staff Working Paper 2001-25 Edith Gagnon, Hashmat Khan Recent research on the new Phillips curve (NPC) (e.g., Galí, Gertler, and López-Salido 2001a) gives marginal cost an important role in capturing pressures on inflation. In this paper we assess the case for using alternative measures of marginal cost to improve the empirical fit of the NPC. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Economic models, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31
December 17, 2000 Dynamic General-Equilibrium Models and Why the Bank of Canada is Interested in Them Bank of Canada Review - Winter 2000-2001 Kevin Moran Dynamic general-equilibrium models (DGEMs) are being increasingly used in macroeconomic research. In this article, the author describes the main features of these models and outlines their contribution to economic research performed at the Bank of Canada. He notes that the basic principle of DGEMs is that the modelling of economic activity, even on a scale as large as the economy of a country, should start with a series of microeconomic problems (at the scale of individuals), which, once resolved, are aggregated to represent the macroeconomic reality described by the model. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Research Topic(s): Economic models