[go: up one dir, main page]

IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bca/bocadp/20-14.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can the Business Outlook Survey Help Improve Estimates of the Canadian Output Gap?

Author

Listed:
  • Calista Cheung
  • Luke Frymire
  • Lise Pichette
Abstract
The output gap is a key variable used to assess inflationary pressures in the economy, but estimates in real time are subject to uncertainty and often revised significantly. This paper assesses whether questions in the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey (BOS) can provide useful signals for broader capacity pressures in the economy. The concept of capacity pressures is captured in the BOS through various questions on firms’ ability to meet demand and labour shortages. In particular, we examine whether these BOS questions, as well as a summary measure of the BOS results, produce information that can be used to improve real-time output gap estimates for Canada. We find that survey data help predict the various measures of the output gap used by the Bank of Canada. This supports the Bank’s practice of using information contained in the BOS to refine its assessment of the current state of the economic cycle. It further provides a framework for incorporating the survey information into quantitative estimates of the output gap.

Suggested Citation

  • Calista Cheung & Luke Frymire & Lise Pichette, 2020. "Can the Business Outlook Survey Help Improve Estimates of the Canadian Output Gap?," Discussion Papers 2020-14, Bank of Canada.
  • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocadp:20-14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2020/12/staff-discussion-paper-2020-14/
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/sdp2020-14.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lawrence R. Klein & Virginia Long, 1973. "Capacity Utilization: Concept, Measurement, and Recent Estimates," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 4(3), pages 743-764.
    2. Athanasios Orphanides & Simon van Norden, 2002. "The Unreliability of Output-Gap Estimates in Real Time," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 569-583, November.
    3. Grigoli, Francesco & Herman, Alexander & Swiston, Andrew & Di Bella, Gabriel, 2015. "Output gap uncertainty and real-time monetary policy," Russian Journal of Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 329-358.
    4. Paul Jenkins & David Longworth, 2002. "Monetary Policy and Uncertainty," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2002(Summer), pages 3-10.
    5. Lise Pichette & Pierre St-Amant & Ben Tomlin & Karine Anoma, 2015. "Measuring Potential Output at the Bank of Canada: The Extended Multivariate Filter and the Integrated Framework," Discussion Papers 15-1, Bank of Canada.
    6. Jan Jacobs & Jan-Egbert Sturm, 2005. "Do Ifo Indicators Help Explain Revisions in German Industrial Production?," Contributions to Economics, in: Jan-Egbert Sturm & Timo Wollmershäuser (ed.), Ifo Survey Data in Business Cycle and Monetary Policy Analysis, pages 93-114, Springer.
    7. Julien Champagne & Guillaume Poulin-Bellisle & Rodrigo Sekkel, 2018. "Evaluating the Bank of Canada Staff Economic Projections Using a New Database of Real-Time Data and Forecasts," Staff Working Papers 18-52, Bank of Canada.
    8. Pichette, Lise & Robitaille, Marie-Noëlle & Salameh, Mohanad & St-Amant, Pierre, 2019. "Dismiss the output gaps? To use with caution given their limitations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 199-215.
    9. Cooley, Thomas F & Hansen, Gary D & Prescott, Edward C, 1995. "Equilibrium Business Cycles with Idle Resources and Variable Capacity Utilization," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 6(1), pages 35-49, June.
    10. Galimberti, Jaqueson K. & Moura, Marcelo L., 2016. "Improving the reliability of real-time output gap estimates using survey forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 358-373.
    11. Clark, Todd E. & McCracken, Michael W., 2009. "Tests of Equal Predictive Ability With Real-Time Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 441-454.
    12. Julien Champagne & Guillaume Poulin‐Bellisle & Rodrigo Sekkel, 2018. "The Real‐Time Properties of the Bank of Canada's Staff Output Gap Estimates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 50(6), pages 1167-1188, September.
    13. Patrick Blagrave & Mr. Roberto Garcia-Saltos & Mr. Douglas Laxton & Fan Zhang, 2015. "A Simple Multivariate Filter for Estimating Potential Output," IMF Working Papers 2015/079, International Monetary Fund.
    14. Leo Butler, 1996. "The Bank of Canada's New Quarterly Porjection Model Part 4 : A Semi- Structural Method to Estimate Potential Output : Combining Economic Theory with a Time-Series Filter," Technical Reports 77, Bank of Canada.
    15. Lise Pichette & Lori Rennison, 2011. "Extracting Information from the Business Outlook Survey: A Principal-Component Approach," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2011(Autumn), pages 21-28.
    16. Lise Pichette & Marie-Noëlle Robitaille, 2017. "Assessing the Business Outlook Survey Indicator Using Real-Time Data," Discussion Papers 17-5, Bank of Canada.
    17. Lise Pichette & Maria Bernier & Marie-Noëlle Robitaille, 2018. "An Alternative Estimate of Canadian Potential Output: The Multivariate State-Space Framework," Discussion Papers 18-14, Bank of Canada.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Margarita Lyakhnova & Yuri Kolenko, 2024. "Nowcasting the Output Gap in Russia Using Enterprise Monitoring Data," Russian Journal of Money and Finance, Bank of Russia, vol. 83(2), pages 26-53, June.
    2. David Amirault & Naveen Rai & Laurent Martin, 2020. "A Reference Guide for the Business Outlook Survey," Discussion Papers 2020-15, Bank of Canada.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dany Brouillette & Marie-Noëlle Robitaille & Laurence Savoie-Chabot & Pierre St-Amant & Bassirou Gueye & Elise Martin, 2019. "The Trend Unemployment Rate in Canada: Searching for the Unobservable," Staff Working Papers 19-13, Bank of Canada.
    2. Lise Pichette & Marie-Noëlle Robitaille & Mohanad Salameh & Pierre St-Amant, 2018. "Dismiss the Gap? A Real-Time Assessment of the Usefulness of Canadian Output Gaps in Forecasting Inflation," Staff Working Papers 18-10, Bank of Canada.
    3. Pichette, Lise & Robitaille, Marie-Noëlle & Salameh, Mohanad & St-Amant, Pierre, 2019. "Dismiss the output gaps? To use with caution given their limitations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 199-215.
    4. Matthieu Verstraete & Lena Suchanek, 2017. "Understanding Monetary Policy and its Effects: Evidence from Canadian Firms Using the Business Outlook Survey," Staff Working Papers 17-24, Bank of Canada.
    5. Lise Pichette & Marie-Noëlle Robitaille, 2017. "Assessing the Business Outlook Survey Indicator Using Real-Time Data," Discussion Papers 17-5, Bank of Canada.
    6. Ms. Burcu Hacibedel & Pierre Mandon & Ms. Priscilla S Muthoora & Nathalie Pouokam, 2019. "Inequality in Good and Bad Times: A Cross-Country Approach," IMF Working Papers 2019/020, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Augustus J. Panton, 2020. "Climate hysteresis and monetary policy," CAMA Working Papers 2020-76, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    8. Mr. Alvar Kangur & Koralai Kirabaeva & Jean-Marc Natal & Simon Voigts, 2019. "How Informative Are Real Time Output Gap Estimates in Europe?," IMF Working Papers 2019/200, International Monetary Fund.
    9. Lise Pichette & Maria Bernier & Marie-Noëlle Robitaille, 2018. "An Alternative Estimate of Canadian Potential Output: The Multivariate State-Space Framework," Discussion Papers 18-14, Bank of Canada.
    10. Julien Champagne & Guillaume Poulin‐Bellisle & Rodrigo Sekkel, 2018. "The Real‐Time Properties of the Bank of Canada's Staff Output Gap Estimates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 50(6), pages 1167-1188, September.
    11. Camila Figueroa & Jorge Fornero & Pablo García, 2019. "Hindsight vs. Real time measurement of the output gap: Implications for the Phillips curve in the Chilean Case," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 854, Central Bank of Chile.
    12. David Amirault & Naveen Rai & Laurent Martin, 2020. "A Reference Guide for the Business Outlook Survey," Discussion Papers 2020-15, Bank of Canada.
    13. Claudio Borio & Marco Jacopo Lombardi & Fabrizio Zampolli, 2016. "Fiscal sustainability and the financial cycle," BIS Working Papers 552, Bank for International Settlements.
    14. Breuer Sebastian & Elstner Steffen, 2020. "Germany’s Growth Prospects against the Backdrop of Demographic Change," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 240(5), pages 565-605, October.
    15. Lise Pichette, 2012. "Extracting Information from the Business Outlook Survey Using Statistical Approaches," Discussion Papers 12-8, Bank of Canada.
    16. Guérin, Pierre & Maurin, Laurent & Mohr, Matthias, 2015. "Trend-Cycle Decomposition Of Output And Euro Area Inflation Forecasts: A Real-Time Approach Based On Model Combination," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 363-393, March.
    17. Aqib Aslam & Samya Beidas-Strom & Mr. Rudolfs Bems & Oya Celasun & Zsoka Koczan, 2016. "Trading on Their Terms? Commodity Exporters in the Aftermath of the Commodity Boom," IMF Working Papers 2016/027, International Monetary Fund.
    18. Xueting Yu & Yuhan Zhu & Guangming Lv, 2020. "Analysis of the Impact of China’s GDP Data Revision on Monetary Policy from the Perspective of Uncertainty," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(6), pages 1251-1274, May.
    19. Günes Kamber & James Morley & Benjamin Wong, 2018. "Intuitive and Reliable Estimates of the Output Gap from a Beveridge-Nelson Filter," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(3), pages 550-566, July.
    20. repec:jns:jbstat:v:227:y:2007:i:1:p:87-101 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Kai Carstensen & Felix Kießner & Thies Rossian, 2023. "Estimation of the TFP Gap for the Largest Five EMU Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 10245, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business fluctuations and cycles; Central bank research; Economic models; Monetary policy and uncertainty; Potential output;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bca:bocadp:20-14. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bocgvca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.