The Fisher BCPI: The Bank of Canada’s New Commodity Price Index Staff Discussion Paper 2010-6 Ilan Kolet, Ryan Macdonald The prices of commodities produced in Canada have important implications for the performance of the Canadian economy and the conduct of monetary policy. The authors explain an important change to the methodology used to construct the Bank of Canada commodity price index (BCPI). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): C, C1, E, E3
On the Advantages of Disaggregated Data: Insights from Forecasting the U.S. Economy in a Data-Rich Environment Staff Working Paper 2010-10 Nikita Perevalov, Philipp Maier The good forecasting performance of factor models has been well documented in the literature. While many studies focus on a very limited set of variables (typically GDP and inflation), this study evaluates forecasting performance at disaggregated levels to examine the source of the improved forecasting accuracy, relative to a simple autoregressive model. We use the latest revision of over 100 U.S. time series over the period 1974-2009 (monthly and quarterly data). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C50, C53, E, E3, E37, E4, E47
Market Expectations and Option Prices: Evidence for the Can$/US$ Exchange Rate Staff Discussion Paper 2010-2 Alejandro García, Andrei Prokopiw Security prices contain valuable information that can be used to make a wide variety of economic decisions. To extract this information, a model is required that relates market prices to the desired information, and that ideally can be implemented using timely and low-cost methods. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Exchange rates, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C0, C00, C02, G, G1, G13
Introducing the Bank of Canada's Projection Model for the Global Economy Technical Report No. 99 Jeannine Bailliu, Patrick Blagrave, James Rossiter To complement its existing set of tools to analyze and forecast developments in the global economy, the Bank of Canada recently developed a version of the Global Projection Model (GPM) jointly with staff at the International Monetary Fund. Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C6, C68, E, E2, E27, E3, E37, F, F0, F01
Assembling a Real-Financial Micro-Dataset for Canadian Households Staff Working Paper 2010-6 Umar Faruqui The lack of consolidated Canadian micro data on household balance sheets and expenditures has been an important impediment to empirical research into real-financial linkages in the Canadian household sector. Our paper attempts to fill this data gap by merging household balance sheet data from the Canadian Financial Monitor survey with household expenditure data from the Survey of Household Spending. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Sectoral balance sheet JEL Code(s): C, C8, C81, D, D1, D10
Macroprudential Regulation and Systemic Capital Requirements Staff Working Paper 2010-4 Céline Gauthier, Alfred Lehar, Moez Souissi In the aftermath of the financial crisis, there is interest in reforming bank regulation such that capital requirements are more closely linked to a bank's contribution to the overall risk of the financial system. In our paper we compare alternative mechanisms for allocating the overall risk of a banking system to its member banks. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C1, C15, C8, C81, E, E4, E44, G, G2, G21
Estimating DSGE-Model-Consistent Trends for Use in Forecasting Staff Working Paper 2009-35 Jean-Philippe Cayen, Marc-André Gosselin, Sharon Kozicki The workhorse DSGE model used for monetary policy evaluation is designed to capture business cycle fluctuations in an optimization-based format. It is commonplace to log-linearize models and express them with variables in deviation-from-steady-state format. 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, E5, E52
A Consistent Test for Multivariate Conditional Distributions Staff Working Paper 2009-34 Fuchun Li, Greg Tkacz We propose a new test for a multivariate parametric conditional distribution of a vector of variables yt given a conditional vector xt. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C1, C12, C2, C22
Real Time Detection of Structural Breaks in GARCH Models Staff Working Paper 2009-31 Zhongfang He, John M. Maheu A sequential Monte Carlo method for estimating GARCH models subject to an unknown number of structural breaks is proposed. Particle filtering techniques allow for fast and efficient updates of posterior quantities and forecasts in real time. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C1, C11, C15, C2, C22, C5, C53
Structural Inflation Models with Real Wage Rigidities: The Case of Canada Staff Working Paper 2009-21 Jean-Marie Dufour, Lynda Khalaf, Maral Kichian Real wage rigidities have recently been proposed as a way of building intrinsic persistence in inflation within the context of New Keynesian Phillips Curves. Using two recent illustrative structural models, we evaluate empirically the importance of real wage rigidities in the data and the extent to which such models provide useful information regarding price stickiness. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices, Labour markets JEL Code(s): C, C1, C13, C5, C52, E, E3, E31