The debate on the order of integration of interest rates has long focused on the I(1) versus I(0) distinction. In this paper we instead use the wavelet OLS estimator of Jensen (1999) to estimate the fractional integration parameters of several interest rates for the United States and Canada from...

We introduce a flexible nonparametric technique that can be used to select weights in a forecast-combining regression. We perform a Monte Carlo study that evaluates the performance of the proposed technique along with other linear and nonlinear forecast-combining procedures. The simulation...

Since the advent of standard national accounts data over 60 years ago, economists have relied on monthly or quarterly data supplied by central statistical agencies for macroeconomics modelling and forecasting. However, technological advances of the past several years have resulted in new...

Economists have traditionally relied on monthly or quarterly data supplied by central statistical agencies for macroeconomic monitoring. However, technological advances of the past several years have resulted in new high-frequency data sources that could potentially provide more accurate and...

This study examines whether simple measures of Canadian equity and housing price misalignments contain leading information about output growth and inflation. Previous authors have generally found that the information content of asset prices in general, and equity and housing prices in...

The difference in yields between long-term and short-term securities has been used both as a business cycle leading indicator and as an indicator of the current impact of monetary policy. This paper tests for an asymmetry, in the form of a threshold effect, such that the impact of the yield...

For quantities that are approximately stationary, the information content of statistical forecasts tends to decline as the forecast horizon increases, and there exists a maximum horizon beyond which forecasts cannot provide discernibly more information about the variable than is present in the...

For stationary transformations of variables, there exists a maximum horizon beyond which forecasts can provide no more information about the variable than is present in the unconditional mean. Meteorological forecasts, typically excepting only experimental or exploratory situations, are not...

This paper evaluates the forecasting performance of factor models for Canadian inflation. This type of model was introduced and examined by Stock and Watson (1999a), who have shown that it is quite promising for forecasting U.S. inflation. Using a dimension-reduction method similar to...