IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bca/bocawp/04-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey: An Assessment

Author

Listed:
  • Monica Martin
  • Cristiano Papile

Abstract

Since the autumn of 1997, the Bank of Canada's regional offices (located in Halifax, Montréal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver) have conducted consultations with businesses across Canada on a quarterly basis. These consultations are now referred to as the Business Outlook Survey (BOS). The BOS provides a timely source of information on what businesses are experiencing and planning. Business consultations are timed to feed into the decision-making process that precedes the Bank's fixed dates for announcing monetary policy decisions. The consultations are structured around a questionnaire. Every quarter, 100 firms that reflect the diverse composition of the Canadian economy in terms of region, type of business activity, and firm size are interviewed. Because the BOS is a relatively new tool, the survey time series is short. The assessment presented in this paper, which is based on charts and correlations, is intended as an initial guide. The findings suggest that the survey serves as a barometer of the Canadian economy and provides leading signals of future activity. The interview responses also inform the Bank about production-capacity constraints, labour shortages, and inflation expectations.

Suggested Citation

  • Monica Martin & Cristiano Papile, 2004. "The Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey: An Assessment," Staff Working Papers 04-15, Bank of Canada.
    • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocawp:04-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/wp04-15.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Balke, Nathan S & Petersen, D'Ann, 2002. "How Well Does the Beige Book Reflect Economic Activity? Evaluating Qualitative Information Quantitatively," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(1), pages 114-136, February.
    2. Monica Martin, 2004. "The Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2004(Spring), pages 3-18.
    3. Karen E. Dynan & Douglas W. Elmendorf, 2001. "Do provisional estimates of output miss economic turning points?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2001-52, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Paul Jenkins & David Longworth, 2002. "Monetary Policy and Uncertainty," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2002(Summer), pages 3-10.
    5. David Amirault & Louis-Robert Lafleur, 2000. "Recent Performance of the Canadian Economy: A Regional View," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2000(Autumn), pages 13-23.
    6. Tiff Macklem, 2002. "Information and Analysis for Monetary Policy: Coming to a Decision," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2002(Summer), pages 11-18.
    7. Chris Aylmer & Troy Gill, 2003. "Business Surveys and Economic Activity," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2003-01, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    8. Carolyn Kwan, 2002. "Restructuring in the Canadian Economy: A Survey of Firms," Staff Working Papers 02-8, Bank of Canada.
    9. Brigid Brady & Farid Novin, 2001. "Factors Affecting Regional Economic Performance in Canada," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2001(Autumn), pages 21-29.
    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. Daniel de Munnik & Kuan Xu, 2007. "Micro Foundations of Price-Setting Behaviour: Evidence from Canadian Firms," Staff Working Papers 07-31, Bank of Canada.
    2. Tony Chernis & Rodrigo Sekkel, 2017. "A dynamic factor model for nowcasting Canadian GDP growth," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 217-234, August.
    3. Lise Pichette & Marie-Noëlle Robitaille, 2017. "Assessing the Business Outlook Survey Indicator Using Real-Time Data," Discussion Papers 17-5, Bank of Canada.
    4. Jorge Canales-Kriljenko & Turgut Kisinbay & Rodolfo Maino & Eric Parrado, 2006. "Setting the Operational Framework for Producing Inflation Forecasts," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 362, Central Bank of Chile.

    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. David Amirault & Naveen Rai & Laurent Martin, 2020. "A Reference Guide for the Business Outlook Survey," Discussion Papers 2020-15, Bank of Canada.
    2. Tiff Macklem, 2005. "Commentary : central bank communication and policy effectiveness," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Aug, pages 475-494.
    3. André Binette & Dmitri Tchebotarev, 2019. "Canada’s Monetary Policy Report: If Text Could Speak, What Would It Say?," Staff Analytical Notes 2019-5, Bank of Canada.
    4. Sharon Kozicki & Jill Vardy, 2017. "Communicating Uncertainty in Monetary Policy," Discussion Papers 17-14, Bank of Canada.
    5. Lise Pichette, 2012. "Extracting Information from the Business Outlook Survey Using Statistical Approaches," Discussion Papers 12-8, Bank of Canada.
    6. Bespalova, Olga, 2018. "Forecast Evaluation in Macroeconomics and International Finance. Ph.D. thesis, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA," MPRA Paper 117706, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Kevin Clinton & Marianne Johnson & Mr. Jaromir Benes & Mr. Douglas Laxton & Mr. Troy D Matheson, 2010. "Structural Models in Real Time," IMF Working Papers 2010/056, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Sinclair, Tara M., 2019. "Characteristics and implications of Chinese macroeconomic data revisions," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1108-1117.
    9. López-Enciso, Enrique Antonio & Vargas-Herrera, Hernando & Rodríguez-Niño, Norberto, 2017. "La estrategia de inflación objetivo en Colombia," Chapters, in: Uribe, José Darío (ed.), Historia del Banco de la República 1923-2015, chapter 11, pages 465-539, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    10. Robert L. Lacy, 1999. "Gauging manufacturing activity: the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's survey of manufacturers," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Win, pages 79-98.
    11. Stekler, Herman & Symington, Hilary, 2016. "Evaluating qualitative forecasts: The FOMC minutes, 2006–2010," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 559-570.
    12. Francisco Ruge‐Murcia, 2022. "How do central banks make decisions?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(4), pages 1643-1670, November.
    13. Walpurga Köhler-Töglhofer & Lukas Reiss, 2009. "The Effectiveness of Fiscal Stimulus Packages in Times of Crisis," Monetary Policy & the Economy, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue Q1/09, pages 78-99.
    14. Madeline Zavodny & Donna K. Ginther, 2005. "Does the Beige Book Move Financial Markets?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(1), pages 138-151, July.
    15. Carl E. Walsh, 2003. "Implications of a changing economic structure for the strategy of monetary policy," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 297-348.
    16. Robert L. Brown & Bruce T. Grimm & Marian B. Sacks, 2004. "Reliability of the State Personal Income Estimates," BEA Papers 0034, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    17. Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Carl E. Walsh, 2009. "Monetary Policy under Uncertainty and Learning: An Overview," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Carl E. Walsh & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Series (ed.),Monetary Policy under Uncertainty and Learning, edition 1, volume 13, chapter 1, pages 001-025, Central Bank of Chile.
    18. 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.
    19. Huang, Yu-Lieh & Kuan, Chung-Ming, 2021. "Economic prediction with the FOMC minutes: An application of text mining," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 751-761.
    20. Michelle T. Armesto & Ruben Hernandez-Murillo & Michael T. Owyang & Jeremy M. Piger, 2007. "Identifying asymmetry in the language of the Beige Book: a mixed data sampling approach," Working Papers 2007-010, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business fluctuations and cycles; Domestic demand and components;

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E66 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General Outlook and Conditions

    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:bocawp:04-15. 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.