The analysis and forecasting of developments in the U.S. economy have always played a critical role in the formulation of Canadian economic and financial policy. Thus, the Bank places considerable importance on generating internal forecasts of U.S. economic activity as an input to the Canadian projection.
In a recent paper, Chang, Gomes, and Schorfheide (2002) extend the standard real business cycle (RBC) model to allow for a learning-by-doing (LBD) mechanism whereby current labour supply affects future productivity.
In this paper, the author describes reduced-form linear and non-linear econometric models developed to forecast and analyze quarterly data on output growth in the Canadian manufacturing sector from 1981 to 2003.
The author empirically tests two aspects of the interaction between financial variables and inventory investment: negative cash flow and finance constraints due to asymmetric information.