Dynamic Factor Analysis for Measuring Money Staff Working Paper 2003-21 Paul Gilbert, Lise Pichette Technological innovations in the financial industry pose major problems for the measurement of monetary aggregates. The authors describe work on a new measure of money that has a more satisfactory means of identifying and removing the effects of financial innovations. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Monetary aggregates, Monetary and financial indicators JEL Code(s): C, C4, C43, C8, C82, E, E5, E51
How to Improve Inflation Targeting at the Bank of Canada Staff Working Paper 2002-23 Nicholas Rowe This paper shows that if the Bank of Canada is optimally adjusting its monetary policy instrument in response to inflation indicators to target 2 per cent inflation at a two-year horizon, then deviations of inflation from 2 per cent represent the Bank's forecast errors, and should be uncorrelated with its information set, which includes two-year lagged values of the instrument and the indicators. Positive or negative correlations are evidence of systematic errors in monetary policy. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation targets, Monetary and financial indicators, Monetary policy implementation JEL Code(s): E, E5
August 20, 2002 Information and Analysis for Monetary Policy: Coming to a Decision Bank of Canada Review - Summer 2002 Tiff Macklem This article outlines one of the Bank's key approaches to dealing with the uncertainty that surrounds decisions on monetary policy: the consideration of a wide range of information from a variety of sources. More specifically, it describes the information and analysis that the monetary policy decision-makers—the Governing Council of the Bank of Canada—receive in the two or three weeks leading up to a decision on the setting of the policy rate—the target overnight interest rate. The article also describes how the Governing Council reaches this decision. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Monetary and financial indicators, Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy implementation
Corporate Bond Spreads and the Business Cycle Staff Working Paper 2002-15 Zhiwei Zhang This paper examines the predictive power of credit spreads from the corporate bond market. The high-yield bond spread and investment-grade spread can explain 68 per cent and 42 per cent of output variations one year ahead, while the term spread based on government debts can explain only 12 per cent of them. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Monetary and financial indicators, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E5, G, G1
Forecasting GDP Growth Using Artificial Neural Networks Staff Working Paper 1999-3 Greg Tkacz, Sarah Hu Financial and monetary variables have long been known to contain useful leading information regarding economic activity. In this paper, the authors wish to determine whether the forecasting performance of such variables can be improved using neural network models. The main findings are that, at the 1-quarter forecasting horizon, neural networks yield no significant forecast improvements. […] Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Monetary and financial indicators JEL Code(s): C, C4, C45, E, E3, E37, E4, E44
May 11, 1998 The use of forward rate agreements in Canada Bank of Canada Review - Spring 1998 Jean-Yves Paquette, David Stréliski In this article, the authors identify forward rate agreements, or FRAs, as short-term interest rate guarantee instruments negotiated by two parties, one of which is typically a bank. In outlining the main features of FRAs, the authors contrast them with BAX contracts (futures contracts on bankers' acceptances that are negotiated through the Montreal Exchange). The article then describes how market participants use FRAs to cover short-term interest rate risk. The final section deals with the way the Bank of Canada uses information from the FRA market as an indicator of interest rate expectations. Econometric models used to retrieve information from FRA rates, as well as the underlying assumptions, are discussed in an appendix. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Financial markets, Monetary and financial indicators
The Structure of Interest Rates in Canada: Information Content about Medium-Term Inflation Staff Working Paper 1997-10 Jim Day, Ron Lange This paper examines the relationship between the term structure of interest rates and future changes in inflation for Canada using a newly constructed par-value yield series. The main conclusion of the empirical work is that the slope of the nominal term structure from 1- to 5-year maturities is a reasonably good predictor of future changes in inflation over these horizons. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Interest rates, Monetary and financial indicators JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43
Interpreting Money-Supply and Interest-Rate Shocks as Monetary-Policy Shocks Staff Working Paper 1996-8 Marcel Kasumovich In this paper two shocks are analysed using Canadian data: a money-supply shock ("M-shock") and an interest-rate shock ("R-shock"). Money-supply shocks are derived using long-run restrictions based on long-run propositions of monetary theory. Thus, an M-shock is represented by an orthogonalized innovation in the trend shared by money and prices. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary and financial indicators, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43, E5, E51
Overnight Rate Innovations as a Measure of Monetary Policy Shocks in Vector Autoregressions Staff Working Paper 1996-4 Walter Engert, Ben Fung, Jamie Armour The authors examine the Bank of Canada's overnight rate as a measure of monetary policy in vector autoregression (VAR) models. Since the time series of the Bank's current measure of the overnight rate begins only in 1971, the authors splice it to day loan rate observations to obtain a sufficiently long period of data. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Monetary and financial indicators JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52
The Empirical Performance of Alternative Monetary and Liquidity Aggregates Staff Working Paper 1995-12 Joseph Atta-Mensah This paper examines the empirical performance of alternatives to the monetary aggregates currently published by the Bank of Canada. The results show that real M1 and real M1a perform about equally well in providing leading information about real output at short horizons. However, on theoretical grounds, M1a is a more attractive aggregate, since it excludes […] Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary and financial indicators