September 21, 2015
Business fluctuations and cycles
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The Carrot and the Stick: The Business Cycle Implications of Incentive Pay in the Labor Search Model
This paper considers a real business cycle model with labor search frictions where two types of incentive pay are explicitly introduced following the insights from the micro literature on performance pay (e.g. Lazear, 1986). -
The Endogenous Relative Price of Investment
This paper takes a full-information model-based approach to evaluate the link between investment-specific technology and the inverse of the relative price of investment. The two-sector model presented includes monopolistic competition where firms can vary the markup charged on their product depending on the number of firms competing. -
Model Averaging in Markov-Switching Models: Predicting National Recessions with Regional Data
This paper introduces new weighting schemes for model averaging when one is interested in combining discrete forecasts from competing Markov-switching models. In particular, we extend two existing classes of combination schemes – Bayesian (static) model averaging and dynamic model averaging – so as to explicitly reflect the objective of forecasting a discrete outcome. -
Productive Misallocation and International Transmission of Credit Shocks
We develop an asymmetric, two-country equilibrium business cycle model to study the role of international trade in transmitting and propagating the real effects of global financial shocks. Our model predicts that a recession in a large economy considerably alters a recession in its smaller trade partner, with distinct investment dynamics driving the transmission. -
May 19, 2015
The Way Home: Reading the Economic Signs
Governor Poloz discusses some key indicators the Bank is watching as the Canadian economy heads toward sustainable balanced growth. -
Securitization under Asymmetric Information over the Business Cycle
This paper studies the efficiency of financial intermediation through securitization in a model with heterogeneous investment projects and asymmetric information about the quality of securitized assets. I show that when retaining part of the risk, the issuer of securitized assets may credibly signal its quality. -
January 13, 2015
Drilling Down - Understanding Oil Prices and Their Economic Impact
Deputy Governor Timothy Lane discusses the causes of the recent drop in oil prices and its effects on the global and Canadian economies. -
November 13, 2014
Should Forward Guidance Be Backward-Looking?
When constrained by the zero lower bound, some central banks have communicated a threshold that must be met before short-term interest rates would be permitted to rise. Simulation results for Canada show that forward guidance that is conditional on achieving a price-level threshold can theoretically raise demand and inflation expectations by significantly more than unemployment thresholds. This superior performance is attributable to the fact that the price-level threshold depends on past inflation outcomes. In practice, however, history-dependent thresholds such as this might be more challenging for central banks to communicate. -
November 13, 2014
Firm Strategy, Competitiveness and Productivity: The Case for Canada
At a time when the Bank is expecting a rotation of demand toward exports and investment, and transformative global trends are placing increasing emphasis on innovation, technology and organizational learning, an understanding of the competitiveness strategies of Canadian firms and the factors affecting them has become particularly relevant. This article summarizes findings from a Bank of Canada survey of 151 firms designed to extract signals on elements of firm strategy and organizational capital in order to help inform the macroeconomic outlook.