E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

• Characterizing Breadth in Canadian Economic Activity

  Staff Analytical Note 2020-1 Taylor Webley, Carla Valerio, Maureen MacIsaac

  Real growth in gross domestic product tends to be meaningfully higher when a large share of industries and demand components are growing—that is, when growth is broad across many fronts.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32

• Social Learning and Monetary Policy at the Effective Lower Bound

  Staff Working Paper 2020-2 Jasmina Arifovic, Alex Grimaud, Isabelle Salle, Gauthier Vermandel

  This research develops a model in which the economy is directly influenced by how pessimistic or optimistic economic agents are about the future. The agents may hold different views and update them as new economic data become available.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Central bank research, Credibility, Economic models, Monetary Policy, Monetary policy communications JEL Code(s): C, C8, C82, E, E3, E32, E5, E52

• Technological Progress and Monetary Policy: Managing the Fourth Industrial Revolution

  Staff Discussion Paper 2019-11 Stephen S. Poloz

  This paper looks at the implications for monetary policy of the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning, which is sometimes called the “fourth industrial revolution.”

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Discussion Papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial stability, Monetary policy framework, Uncertainty and monetary policy JEL Code(s): C, C5, E, E3, O, O1, O11, O3, O33

• What Does Structural Analysis of the External Finance Premium Say About Financial Frictions?

  Staff Working Paper 2019-38 Jelena Zivanovic

  I use a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) with sign restrictions to provide conditional evidence on the behavior of the US external finance premium (EFP). The results indicate that the excess bond premium, a proxy for the EFP, reacts countercyclically to supply and monetary policy shocks and procyclically to demand shocks.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E4, E44

• A Comprehensive Evaluation of Measures of Core Inflation in Canada: An Update

  Staff Discussion Paper 2019-9 Helen Lao, Ceciline Steyn

  We provide an updated evaluation of the value of various measures of core inflation that could be used in the conduct of monetary policy. We find that the Bank of Canada’s current preferred measures of core inflation—CPI-trim, CPI-median and CPI-common—continue to outperform alternative core measures across a range of criteria.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Discussion Papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, E52

• Bridging Canadian Business Lending and Market-Based Risk Measures

  Staff Analytical Note 2019-26 Guillaume Ouellet Leblanc, Maxime Leboeuf

  Lending to business is central to economic growth because it supports investment by firms. Knowing how market participants view risk in the financial system can give the Bank of Canada information about future growth in business loans. In this note, we look at three market-based risk measures and find that sudden increases in the perception of risk in the Canadian banking system are associated with a weaker outlook for business loans and real gross domestic product.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Financial markets JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E4, E44, G, G1, G12

• Exploring Wage Phillips Curves in Advanced Economies

  Staff Discussion Paper 2019-8 Rose Cunningham, Vikram Rai, Kristina Hess

  We investigate the extent to which excess supply (demand) in labour markets contributes to a lower (higher) growth rate of average nominal wages for workers. Using panel methods on data from 10 advanced economies for 1992–2018, we produce reduced-form estimates of a wage Phillips curve specification that is consistent with a New Keynesian framework.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Discussion Papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Labour markets, Monetary Policy JEL Code(s): C, C3, C33, E, E3, E31, E32

• Lending Standards, Productivity and Credit Crunches

  Staff Working Paper 2019-25 Jonathan Swarbrick

  We propose a macroeconomic model in which adverse selection in investment drives the amplification of macroeconomic fluctuations, in line with prominent roles played by the credit crunch and collapse of the asset-backed security market in the financial crisis.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Credit and credit aggregates, Financial markets, Financial stability, Interest rates, Productivity JEL Code(s): E, E2, E22, E3, E32, E4, E44, G, G0, G01

• How Oil Supply Shocks Affect the Global Economy: Evidence from Local Projections

  Staff Discussion Paper 2019-6 Olivier Gervais

  We provide empirical evidence on the impact of oil supply shocks on global aggregates. To do this, we first extract structural oil supply shocks from a standard oil-price determination model found in the literature.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Discussion Papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, C5, E, E3, E37, Q, Q4, Q43

• Central Bank Communication That Works: Lessons from Lab Experiments

  Staff Working Paper 2019-21 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Luba Petersen

  We use controlled laboratory experiments to test the causal effects of central bank communication on economic expectations and to distinguish the underlying mechanisms of those effects. In an experiment where subjects learn to forecast economic variables, we find that central bank communication has a stabilizing effect on individual and aggregate outcomes and that the size of the effect varies with the type of communication.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Monetary policy implementation, Transmission of monetary policy JEL Code(s): C, C9, D, D8, D84, E, E3, E5, E52