A probabilistic forecast is the estimated probability with which a future event will occur. One interesting feature of such forecasts is their calibration, or the match between the predicted probabilities and the actual outcome probabilities. Calibration has been evaluated in the past by...

A probabilistic forecast is the estimated probability with which a future event will satisfy a specified criterion. One interesting feature of such forecasts is their calibration, or the match between predicted probabilities and actual outcome probabilities. Calibration has been evaluated in the...

Policy makers must base their decisions on preliminary and partially revised data of varying reliability. Realistic modeling of data revisions is required to guide decision makers in their assessment of current and future conditions. This paper provides a new framework with which to model data...

For more than a decade, debates over the impact of new information technologies on trend productivity growth rates have played a key role in the formulation of monetary policy in many countries, including the United States and Canada. However, the question of whether the trend growth rate of...

The surge in fiscal deficits since 2008 has put a renewed focus on the authors’ understanding of fiscal policy. The interaction of fiscal and monetary policy during this period has also been the subject of much discussion and analysis. This paper gives new insight into past fiscal policy and...

Recent work on policy rules under uncertainty have highlighted the impact of output gap measurement errors on economic outcomes and their importance in the formulation of appropriate policy rules. This paper investigates the reliability of current estimates of the output gap in Canada. We begin...

A stable predictive relationship between inflation and the output gap, often referred to as a Phillips curve, provides the basis for countercyclical monetary policy in many models. In this paper, we evaluate the usefulness of alternative univariate and multivariate estimates of the output gap...

This paper develops a new test for speculative bubbles, which is applied to data for the Japanese yen, the German mark and the Canadian dollar exchange rates from 1977 to 1991. The test assumes that bubbles display a particular kind of regime-switching behaviour, which is shown to imply...