Do Mechanical Filters Provide a Good Approximation of Business Cycles? Technical Report No. 78 Alain Guay, Pierre St-Amant In this paper, the authors examine how well the Hodrick-Prescott filter (HP) and the band-pass filter recently proposed by Baxter and King (BK) extract the business-cycle component of macroeconomic time series. Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, E, E3, E32
The Bank of Canada's New Quarterly Projection Model, Part 4. A Semi-Structural Method to Estimate Potential Output: Combining Economic Theory with a Time-Series Filter Technical Report No. 77 Leo Butler The level of potential output plays a central role in the Bank of Canada's new Quarterly Projection Model (QPM). This report, the fourth in a series documenting QPM, describes a general method to measure potential output, as well as its implementation in the QPM system. Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Economic models JEL Code(s): C, C5, C51, E, E2, E23
Speculative Behaviour, Regime-Switching and Stock Market Crashes Staff Working Paper 1996-13 Simon van Norden, Huntley Schaller This paper uses regime-switching econometrics to study stock market crashes and to explore the ability of two very different economic explanations to account for historical crashes. The first explanation is based on historical accounts of "manias and panics." Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C4, C40, E, E4, E44, G, G1, G12
Avoiding the Pitfalls: Can Regime-Switching Tests Detect Bubbles? Staff Working Paper 1996-11 Simon van Norden, Robert Vigfusson Work on testing for bubbles has caused much debate, much of which has focussed on methodology. Monte Carlo simulations reported in Evans (1991) showed that standard tests for unit roots and cointegration frequently reject the presence of bubbles even when such bubbles are present by construction. Evans referred to this problem as the pitfall of testing for bubbles. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, C5, C52
Unit-Root Tests and Excess Returns Staff Working Paper 1996-10 Marie-Josée Godbout, Simon van Norden Several recent papers have presented evidence from foreign exchange and other markets suggesting that the log of excess returns can be characterized as first-order integrated processes (I(1)). This contrasts sharply with the "conventional" wisdom that log prices are integrated of order one I(1) and that log returns should therefore be integrated of order zero I(0), and even more sharply with the view that past returns have no ability to predict future returns (weak market efficiency). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C1, C12, F, F3, F31
Does Inflation Uncertainty Vary with the Level of Inflation? Staff Working Paper 1996-9 Allan Crawford, Marcel Kasumovich The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that inflation uncertainty increases at higher levels of inflation. Our analysis is based on the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) class of models, which allow the conditional variance of the error term to be time-varying. Since this variance is a proxy for inflation uncertainty, a positive relationship between the conditional variance and inflation would be interpreted as evidence that inflation uncertainty increases with the level of inflation. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Monetary policy and uncertainty JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, E, E3, E31
Excess Volatility and Speculative Bubbles in the Canadian Dollar: Real or Imagined? Technical Report No. 76 John Murray, Simon van Norden, Robert Vigfusson Greater intervention by the public sector is often proposed as a solution to the increased speculation and excessive price volatility thought to characterize today's competitive world financial system. Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Exchange rates JEL Code(s): C, C4, C40, F, F3, F31
The Bank of Canada's New Quarterly Projection Model, Part 3. The Dynamic Model: QPM Technical Report No. 75 Donald Coletti, Benjamin Hunt, David Rose, Robert Tetlow The Bank of Canada's new Quarterly Projection Model, QPM, combines the short-term dynamic properties necessary to support regular economic projections with the consistent behavioural structure necessary for policy analysis. Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Economic models JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E1, E17
Regime-Switching Models: A Guide to the Bank of Canada Gauss Procedures Staff Working Paper 1996-3 Simon van Norden, Robert Vigfusson This paper is a user's guide to a set of Gauss procedures developed at the Bank of Canada for estimating regime-switching models. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C6, C63
Switching Between Chartists and Fundamentalists: A Markov Regime-Switching Approach Staff Working Paper 1996-1 Robert Vigfusson Since the early 1980s, models based on economic fundamentals have been poor at explaining the movements in the exchange rate (Messe 1990). In response to this problem, Frankel and Froot (1988) developed a model that uses two approaches to forecast the exchange rate: the fundamentalist approach, which bases the forecast on economic fundamentals, and the chartist approach, which bases the forecast on the past behaviour of the exchange rate. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C4, C40, G, G1, G12