In this paper, the authors use polynomial adjustment cost (PAC) models to analyze and forecast the main components of the U.S. trade sector. For instance, they model and measure the elasticities of imports and exports to changes in the exchange rate and income. PAC models provide a theoretical...

The authors explore the usefulness of macroeconomic models in analyzing global economic developments by examining movements in commodity prices between July 2007 and July 2008. They use the Bank of Canada's version of the Global Economy Model and investigate the longerterm outlook for commodity...

This study has three main objectives: first, to determine whether the good performance of the U.S. economy observed in recent years is attributable to an upsurge in potential GDP; second, to identify the variables related to aggregate supply, whose trend might explain the evolution in economic...

Traditional structural models cannot distinguish whether changes in activity are a function of altered expectations today or lagged responses to past plans. Polynomial-adjustment-cost (PAC) models remove this ambiguity by explicitly separating observed dynamic behaviour into movements that have...

This paper compares the performance of simple inflation targeting (IT) and price-level path targeting (PLPT) rules to stabilize the macroeconomy, in response to a series of shocks, similar to those seen in Canada and the United States over the 1983 to 2004 period. The analysis is conducted in a...

The authors use the Bank of Canada's version of the Global Economy Model, a multi-country, multi-sector dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with an active banking system (the BoC-GEM-FIN), to study the evolution of global current account balances following the recent global financial...

The analysis and forecasting of developments in the U.S. economy have always played a critical role in the formulation of Canadian economic and financial policy. Thus, the Bank places considerable importance on generating internal forecasts of U.S. economic activity as an input to the Canadian...

In the United States, the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate of promoting stable inflation and maximum employment. Since the Fed directly controls only one instrument-the federal funds rate-the authors argue that the Fed's priorities continuously alternate between inflation and economic...

The linkages between inflation and the economy's cyclical position are thought to be strongly affected by the credibility of monetary authorities. The author complements existing research by estimating a small forward-looking model of the U.S. economy with endogenous central bank credibility....

We develop a five-region version (Canada, an oil exporter, the United States, emerging Asia and Japan plus the euro area) of the Global Economy Model (GEM) encompassing production and trade of crude oil, and use it to study the international transmission mechanism of shocks that drive oil...