Real rigidities are an important feature of modern sticky price models and are policyrelevant because of their welfare consequences, but cannot be structurally identified from time series. I evaluate the plausibility of capital specificity as a source of real rigidities using a two-dimensional...

This paper identifies the aggregate financial shocks and quantifies their effects on business investment based on an estimated DSGE model with firm-level heterogeneity. On average, financial shocks contribute only 1.1% of the variation in U.S. public firms' aggregate investment. The negligible...

Model risk is a constant danger for financial economists using interest-rate forecasts for the purposes of monetary policy analysis, portfolio allocations, or risk-management decisions. Use of multiple models does not necessarily solve the problem as it greatly increases the work required and...

The good forecasting performance of factor models has been well documented in the literature. While many studies focus on a very limited set of variables (typically GDP and inflation), this study evaluates forecasting performance at disaggregated levels to examine the source of the improved...

A covariance-stationary vector of variables has a Wold representation whose coefficients can be semi-parametrically estimated by local projections (Jordà, 2005). Substituting the Wold representations for variables in model expressions generates restrictions that can be used by the method of...

While the usefulness of factor models has been acknowledged over recent years, little attention has been devoted to the forecasting power of these models for the Japanese economy. In this paper, we aim at assessing the relative performance of factor models over different samples, including the...

The Large Value Transfer System (LVTS) is Canada's main electronic interbank funds transfer system that financial institutions use daily to transmit thousands of payments worth several billions of dollars. The LVTS is different than real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems because, while each...

Most central banks effect changes to their target or policy rate in discrete increments (e.g., multiples of 0.25%) following public announcements on scheduled dates. Still, for most applications, researchers rely on the assumption that the policy rate changes linearly with economic conditions...

We provide a decomposition of nominal yields into real yields, expectations of future inflation and inflation risk premiums when real bonds or inflation swaps are unavailable or unreliable due to their relative illiquidity. We combine nominal yields with surveys of inflation forecasts within a...

Despite various payment innovations, today, cash is still heavily used to pay for lowvalue purchases. This paper develops a simulation model to test whether standard implications of the theory on cash management and payment choices can explain the use of payment instruments by transaction size....