A large Canadian database for macroeconomic analysis

Abstract

This paper provides a large-scale Canadian macroeconomic database and shows its usefulness for empirical macroeconomic analysis. The data set contains hundreds of Canadian and provincial economic indicators. It is designed to be updated regularly and real-time vintages are publicly available. It relieves users to deal with data changes and methodological revisions. We show four useful features of this data set for macroeconomic research. First, the factor structure explains a sizeable part of the variation of the data set and appears as an appropriate means of dimension reduction. Second, the data set is useful to capture turning points of the Canadian business cycle. Third, it has substantial predictive power when forecasting key macroeconomic indicators. Fourth, the richness of the panel is used to study the effectiveness of monetary policy across regions and sectors.