Econometric and statistical methods

• How Long Does It Take You to Pay? A Duration Study of Canadian Retail Transaction Payment Times

  Staff Working Paper 2018-46 Geneviève Vallée

  Using an exclusive data set of payment times for retail transactions made in Canada, I show that cash is the most time-efficient method of payment (MOP) when compared with payments by debit and credit cards. I model payment efficiency using Cox proportional hazard models, accounting for consumer choice of MOP.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Econometric and statistical methods, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C2, C25, C3, C36, C4, C41, D, D2, D23, E, E4, E41, E42

• Sluggish Forecasts

  Staff Working Paper 2018-39 Monica Jain

  Given the influence that agents’ expectations have on key macroeconomic variables, it is surprising that very few papers have tried to extrapolate agents’ “true” expectations directly from the data. This paper presents one such approach, starting with the hypothesis that there is sluggishness in inflation and real GDP growth forecasts.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E37

• Nowcasting Canadian Economic Activity in an Uncertain Environment

  Staff Discussion Paper 2018-9 Tony Chernis, Rodrigo Sekkel

  This paper studies short-term forecasting of Canadian real GDP and its expenditure components using combinations of nowcasts from different models. Starting with a medium-sized data set, we use a suite of common nowcasting tools for quarterly real GDP and its expenditure components.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Discussion Papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E3, E37, E5, E52

• A Look Inside the Box: Combining Aggregate and Marginal Distributions to Identify Joint Distributions

  Staff Working Paper 2018-29 Marie-Hélène Felt

  This paper proposes a method for estimating the joint distribution of two or more variables when only their marginal distributions and the distribution of their aggregates are observed. Nonparametric identification is achieved by modelling dependence using a latent common-factor structure.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital Currencies, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C1, C14, D, D1, D14, E, E4, E41

• Bitcoin Awareness and Usage in Canada: An Update

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-23 Christopher Henry, Kim Huynh, Gradon Nicholls

  This note provides an update of the results of the 2017 Bitcoin Omnibus Survey (BTCOS) conducted by the Bank of Canada from December 12 to 15, 2017. The BTCOS was previously conducted in November and December 2016 and the results were reported in Henry et al. (2017, forthcoming).

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital Currencies, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C1, C12, E, E4

• Bootstrapping Mean Squared Errors of Robust Small-Area Estimators: Application to the Method-of-Payments Data

  Staff Working Paper 2018-28 Valéry Dongmo Jiongo, Pierre Nguimkeu

  This paper proposes a new bootstrap procedure for mean squared errors of robust small-area estimators. We formally prove the asymptotic validity of the proposed bootstrap method and examine its finite sample performance through Monte Carlo simulations.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C1, C13, C15, C8, C83, E, E4, E41

• On the Evolution of the United Kingdom Price Distributions

  Staff Working Paper 2018-25 Ba M. Chu, Kim Huynh, David T. Jacho-Chávez, Oleksiy Kryvtsov

  We propose a functional principal components method that accounts for stratified random sample weighting and time dependence in the observations to understand the evolution of distributions of monthly micro-level consumer prices for the United Kingdom (UK).

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): C, C1, C14, C8, C83, E, E3, E31, E37

• Noisy Monetary Policy

  Staff Working Paper 2018-23 Tatjana Dahlhaus, Luca Gambetti

  We introduce limited information in monetary policy. Agents receive signals from the central bank revealing new information (“news") about the future evolution of the policy rate before changes in the rate actually take place. However, the signal is disturbed by noise.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets, Monetary policy implementation, Transmission of monetary policy JEL Code(s): C, C1, C18, C3, C32, E, E0, E02, E4, E43, E5, E52

• Applying the Wage-Common to Canadian Provinces

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-16 Jonathan Lachaine

  As at the national level, available sources of hourly wage data for Canadian provinces sometimes send conflicting signals about wage growth. This note has two objectives. First, we develop a common measure of provincial wages (the provincial wage-common) to better capture the underlying wage pressures, reflecting the overall trend across all data sources.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Labour markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): C, C3, C38, J, J3

• Analysis of Asymmetric GARCH Volatility Models with Applications to Margin Measurement

  Staff Working Paper 2018-21 Elena Goldman, Xiangjin Shen

  We explore properties of asymmetric generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models in the threshold GARCH (GTARCH) family and propose a more general Spline-GTARCH model, which captures high-frequency return volatility, low-frequency macroeconomic volatility as well as an asymmetric response to past negative news in both autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH) and GARCH terms.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C5, C58, G, G1, G19, G2, G23, G28