D2 - Production and Organizations
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The Costs of Point-of-Sale Payments in Canada
This study provides insight into the costs of cash, debit card and credit card payments made at the point of sale in Canada in 2014. For each payment method, it examines the total resource costs, which capture the overall use of resources by society as a whole. -
Expropriation Risk and FDI in Developing Countries: Does Return of Capital Dominate Return on Capital?
Previously reported effects of institutional quality and political risks on foreign direct investment (FDI) are mixed and, therefore, difficult to interpret. We present empirical evidence suggesting a relatively clear, statistically robust, and intuitive characterization. -
Information Sharing and Bargaining in Buyer-Seller Networks
This paper presents a model of strategic buyer-seller networks with information exchange between sellers. Prior to engaging in bargaining with buyers, sellers can share access to buyers for a negotiated transfer. We study how this information exchange affects overall market prices, volumes and welfare, given different initial market conditions and information sharing rules. -
The Digital Economy—Insight from a Special Survey with IT Service Exporters
Information technology (IT) is an increasingly integral part of everyday business and personal life reflecting the ongoing and accelerating digital transformation of the economy. In this paper, we present information gathered from a survey with export-oriented firms in the Canadian IT service industry and consultations with industry associations aimed at shedding light on this small but highly dynamic sector. -
Financial Constraint and Productivity: Evidence from Canadian SMEs
The degree to which financial constraint is binding is often not directly observable in commonly used business data sets (e.g., Compustat). In this paper, we measure and estimate the likelihood of a firm being constrained by external financing using a data set of small- and medium-sized Canadian firms. -
Understanding Firms' Inflation Expectations Using the Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey
Inflation expectations are a key determinant of actual and future inflation and thus matter for the conduct of monetary policy. We study how firms form their inflation expectations using quarterly firm-level data from the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey, spanning the 2001 to 2015 period. -
What Is Behind the Weakness in Global Investment?
The recovery in private business investment globally remains extremely weak more than seven years after the financial crisis. This paper contributes to the ongoing policy debate on the factors behind this weakness by analyzing the role of growth prospects and uncertainty in explaining developments in non-residential private business investment in large advanced economies since the crisis. -
A New Data Set of Quarterly Total Factor Productivity in the Canadian Business Sector
In this paper, a quarterly growth-accounting data set is built for the Canadian business sector with the top-down approach of Diewert and Yu (2012). Inputs and outputs are measured and used to estimate the quarterly total factor productivity (TFP). -
13 November 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. -
Stability versus Flexibility: The Role of Temporary Employment in Labour Adjustment
In Canada, temporary workers account for 14 per cent of jobs in the non-farm business sector, are present in a range of industries, and account for 40 per cent of the total job reallocation. Yet most models of job reallocation abstract from temporary workers.