We construct new indicators of the imbalance between demand and supply for the Canadian economy by using natural language processing techniques to analyze earnings calls of publicly listed firms. The results show that the text-based indicators are highly correlated with official inflation data...

Semiparametric Engel curves are used to infer bias in the Canadian CPI as a Cost of Living Index. The budget share of food has long been used as an indicator of welfare. We compare households with the same levels of CPI deflated total expenditure over the period 1978-2000. Differences in the...

Assessing the state of the economy in real time is critical for policy-making, and understanding the risks to those assessments is equally important. Policy-makers are typically provided with point forecasts that contain insufficient information about risks. In contrast, predictive densities...