Economics Commons^™

Essays In Macroeconomics And Finance, Archil Dvalishvili

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1: (A Quantitative Analysis of Interest on Reserves and Reserve Requirements) - I construct a medium scale DSGE model with financial frictions both on the demand (entrepreneurs) and supply (banks) sides of credit to study the costs and benefits of fixed/time-varying minimum reserve requirements and interest paid by the Fed on reserves.The results can be summarized as follows: (1) An optimal time-varying minimum reserve requirement generates substantial welfare gain when compared with a fixed minimum reserve requirement when no interest is paid on reserves. (2) Paying interest on reserves is substantially welfare inferior to a policy with no interest …

Business Cycles, Exchange Rates, And Commodity Prices In Transition Economies, Salome Giorgadze

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation studies macroeconomic connectedness in the transition economies through the business cycle and exchange rate channels and the downside risk relationship between commodity prices and exchange rates of developing economies. My first two chapters focus on the transition economies of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the CIS, a group of former Soviet republics, and my third chapter considers other developing countries too. The first chapter examines macroeconomic connectedness in the CIS region through business cycle synchronization. I investigate the role of the global factor and the CIS factor in evolution of business cycles in the CIS countries by applying …

Income Inequality And Economic Growth: An Analysis, Nicholas Martin

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

Income inequality and its relationship with economic growth has been a subject of debate in academia for decades. This paper examines the relationship the Gini index of five selected countries and four macroeconomic variables (GDP growth, unemployment rate, lending interest rate, and savings rate) for each country with two developed nations being represented (United States and Italy) and three developing nations being represented (Peru, Belarus, and Indonesia). After reviewing the literature on the relationship between income inequality and economic growth, a multivariate regression analysis of each country is presented; first with GDP growth as the dependent variable, followed by a …

Three Essays On Macroeconomics And Development, Guilherme Klein Martins

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a collection of essays that relate, in different forms, macroeconomic policies to economic development. Essay 1 provides evidence that austerity shocks have longrun negative effects on GDP. Besides addressing the important gap in the growing fiscal research regarding the short time horizon of the estimations, the paper analyzes two other important assumptions made in the literature regarding the (i) symmetry of episodes of fiscal expansion and contraction and (ii) uniformity of fiscal multipliers for different sizes of shocks. We use narrative fiscal shocks and propensity score reweighting in a local projections setup to account for the potential …

Three Essays In Behavioral Economics And Macroeconomics: Unraveling Celebrity Influence On Philanthropy, Racial Disparities In Donation Decisions During The Covid-19 Pandemic, And The Impact Of Foreign Direct Investment On Economic Growth In Saudi Arabia, Rawan Khalid Alothaim

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation encompasses three chapters. Two delve into behavioral aspects of charitable donations during the COVID-19 pandemic, investigating celebrity influence and racial disparities, as well as risk preferences. The third chapter shifts to macroeconomics, examining the relationship between Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and economic growth in Saudi Arabia over a long-term horizon. The first chapter investigates the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements on charitable giving during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants' donation decisions were compared after exposure to celebrity and non-profit expert endorsements. Logistic regression and Ordinary Least Squares regression were used to analyze the impact of independent variables on the likelihood …

Essays On Inequality, Growth, And Economic Policy, Philipp E. Erfurth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that study inequality and regional economics in a historical and development context.

The first chapter examines regional inequality among Habsburg regions from the 19th century to today’s EU by using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software to recreate historical regions in present-day projections. The findings suggests that regional disparities are markedly higher today than in the 19th century, despite rapid convergence in the past two decades. The study thus provides evidence of retrospective determinism in the study of the Habsburg economy and suggests that, although regional EU policy has been successful over the past two …

Essays On Housing And Macroeconomics, Pablo Lara Hinojos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1: House Prices and Aggregate Markups: A VAR Approach

Based on the empirical results of Stroebel and Vavra (2019), who find that a local increase in house prices translates into higher local retail markups and prices, I investigate whether this relationship holds at the aggregate level. I first construct a quarterly aggregate markup series and find that house prices and aggregate markups have a positive relationship. This result emerges from a Vector Autoregression (VAR) system that includes the nominal interest rate, the inflation rate, aggregate house prices, aggregate markups, and real output. I use the Impulse Response Functions (IRFs) …

Three Essays On Consumption Smoothing, Logan James Miller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Macroeconomic theory has established that consumption smoothing leads to higher standards of living. A stable consumption path can lead to more stability and less uncertainty between periods of high and low income. However, there is a wide body of literature that shows people do not consistently smooth their consumption when exposed to adverse income shocks. This dissertation uses experimental and empirical methods to better understand the obstacles people face when trying to smooth their consumption over time. It looks to understand the differences in pairs and individuals’ ability to smooth consumption. It also explores how the household’s level of income …

Two Sided Matching: A Study Of Underemployment, Benjamin E. Plevin

Honors Theses

This paper lays out a general equilibrium framework to study and predict the underemployment rate. A heterogeneous labor market in which both workers and firms differ in skill type is considered and calibrated to simulate both unemployment and underemployment rates. Qualitatively, the model’s predictions match the empirical evidence suggesting underemployment decreases with increases to unemployment insurance. Quantitatively, the one-shot foundation limits the model’s predictive capabilities.

Essays In Macroeconomics Of Emerging Markets, Miguel Acosta Henao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1. Law enforcement and the size of the informal sector.

I assemble new cross-country evidence showing that contrary to the standard view, the relationship between the size of the informal sector and tax rates is, at best, ambiguous. Law enforcement and informality also show no clear relation. Motivated by these findings, I augment a standard two-sector (formal and informal) small open economy model with endogenous law enforcement that depends on the size of the informal sector (measured by its assets) and government expenditure. I use a micro-dataset from Colombia to show that both taxes and law enforcement are necessary …

Dimensions Of Us Global Financial Power: Essays On Financial Sanctions, Global Imbalances, And Sovereign Default, Mariam Majd

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines how U.S. capabilities in the global financial arena enable it to affect outcomes to its advantage. The first essay presents theoretical support for the hypothesis that holdings of U.S. sovereign debt collateralize public and private dollar borrowing in developing and emerging market economies. The second essay empirically tests the theory presented in Chapter 1 and provides evidence that, indeed, a statistically significant relationship exists between a country’s official holdings of US Treasury securities and its level of outstanding dollar credit. Our results demonstrate that even after controlling for a persistence effect (i.e., inertia) in US Treasury security …

Essays On Macroeconomics, Helu Jiang

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cohabitation, Marriage, and Fertility: Divergent Patterns for Different Education Groups. The United States has been experiencing a long-term decline in the rates of marriage and fertility and a steady rise in cohabitation. Contradicting the prediction of standard theory that emphasizes the opportunity cost of childrearing from labor market and gender specialization, skilled females have experienced a less pronounced drop in marriage and fertility, while unskilled females have experienced a more evident increase in cohabitation. I propose the following mechanisms to understand this puzzle: for high-skilled females, the higher implicit return of investment in children’s human capital compensates for part of …

Essays On Macro-Finance Affine Term Structure Models, Biancen Xie

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In my dissertation, I focus on theoretical affine term structure models and the development of Bayesian econometric methods to estimate them.

In the first Chapter, we address the question of which unspanned macroeconomic factors are the best in the class of macro-finance Gaussian affine term structure models. To answer this question, we extend Joslin, Priebsch, and Singleton (2014) in two dimensions. First, following Ang and Piazzesi (2003) and Chib and Ergashev (2009), three latent factors, instead of the first three principal components of the yield curve, are used to represent the level, slope and curvature of the yield curve. Second …

The Political Economy Of Accumulation In South Africa: Resource Extraction, Financialization, And Capital Flight As Barriers To Investment And Employment Growth, Seeraj Mohamed

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses a heterodox economics approach to explain poor levels of accumulation in South Africa. This approach to investment theory and models recognizes that many institutions are shaped to help people create stability in a world of fundamental uncertainty and irreversibility. Therefore, this dissertation examines the system of accumulation that developed in South Africa and its evolution. This approach to investment recognizes that beliefs and biases of people running institutions influence investment outcomes and shape ‘path dependence’. The corporations that grew to dominate the South African economy were formed during colonialism and apartheid. They grew around a core of …

The Business Cycle And Health: An Analysis Of How Macroeconomic Conditions Impact Health Outcomes In The U.S., Talitha Kumaresan

Honors Theses

The U.S. spends about twice as much per person on healthcare, yet the disease burden remains higher in the U.S. than in comparable countries (Sawyer and Cox 2018; Sawyer and Gonzales 2017). Although health status is perceived to be an outcome of individual decision making, the business cycle also affects health. While the effect of macroeconomic shocks on health outcomes has been studied extensively, results remain inconclusive. This analysis uses longitudinal data over 30 years and panel data models to examine the effect of macroeconomic conditions on obesity, diabetes, hypertension, depression, congestive heart failure, and heart attack or myocardial infarction. …

Rationality, Revisions, And Real-Time Data, Jason Hall

Honors Theses

Revisions to macroeconomic variables are a significant part of the process by which researchers, the general public, and the government get information about the state of the United States' economy. They are also substantial: this can have large implications for forecasting, macroeconomic research, business decisions, and monetary and fiscal policy. In this paper, I examine the cyclicality of various aggregate variables in U.S.data, and determine that of the major NIPA variables analyzed, only consumption andreal imports revisions display a large degree of cyclicality. I also examine the rationalityof the same set of variables under different definitions of the final value, …

Social Structure Of Accumulation In Turkey (1963 – 2015), Osman C. Icoz

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes capitalism in Turkey during post-1963 period from social structure of accumulation (SSA) theory perspective. The SSA theory is a theory of interaction of institutions and capital accumulation over long run. This dissertation will be the first book length study on Turkey using SSA Theory approach. It will enrich the SSA literature by adding a case of Turkey, which is a developing country; and hence it will be another example that SSA framework can be extended outside of US. I observe two different SSAs during the period of interest. The first one is Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) SSA …

Three Essays On The Housing Market And Financial Intermediaries, Majid Haghani Rizi

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation utilizes the valuable information present in forward looking financial intermediaries and effects of the housing market on macroeconomy. In the second chapter, I study the dynamic relationship in the shadow banking system. Particularly, I investigate theshort-runandthelong-runrelationshipamongthefinancialassetsofthemoneymarket funds, the commercial paper, and the repurchase agreement markets by undertaking a cointegration analysis of quarterly data over the 1985-2013 period. The evidence suggests that there exists a common long-term cointegrating trend among these three components of the shadow banking system. Any disequilibrium in this long-run relationship among these variables is corrected by movement in the financial assets of the money market …

Bayesian State Space Representation Model: Applications To Macroeconomics And International Finance, Hiroshi Morita

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation develops three new econometric models using Bayesian state space representation model in order to apply to macroeconomics and international finance. It consists of 3 chapters. Chapter 1 develops a Markov mixture model of macroeconomic fundamentals to analyze the short-run dynamics of foreign exchange rates. In our model, foreign exchange rates are simultaneously determined by three parities: the interest rate parity, the inflation rate parity, and the equity return rate parity. Using four exchange rates: the U.S. dollar price of the British pound, the German mark, the Japanese yen, and the Canadian dollar, the findings are: (1) Our model …

Essays On Public Policy Analysis Using Macroeconomic Models, Akihiro Nomura

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This thesis is composed of three separate essays.

Three Essays On International Credit Market And Monetary Policy, Anni Huang

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation studies the behavior of international credit flow and the associated monetary policy spillover effect. In the first chapter, I am interested in decomposing the long-run variations and the short-run variations of US dollar denominated credit in emerging market economies. This paper uses a multivariate correlated unobserved component model to study the dynamic relationship among dollar credit in emerging market economies, US interest rates and the dollar index. The results from this model suggest that the transitory shocks to dollar credit in emerging market economies are highly negatively correlated with the transitory shocks to the US interest rate and …

Essays On Debt In Macroeconomics, James G. Partridge

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My dissertation consists of three chapters, where the common theme among them is debt and saving. My work contributes to our understanding of how debt markets function for entrepreneurs, large corporations and households.

The first chapter studies how entrepreneurs used personal borrowing to fund their businesses during the Great Recession. One of the defining characteristics of this period was a “credit crunch” during which the supply of credit dropped for all borrowers. I show that changes in the finances of entrepreneurs between 2007 and 2009 are consistent with entrepreneurs using personal assets to secure lending for their businesses and overcome …

Does Lowering The Interest Rate Stimulate Economic Growth? An Analysis Of Current Macroeconomic Policy, Tomas Araujo

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The effectiveness of monetary policy moving forward from the subprime mortgage crisis has come into question by academics and economists from around the world. The unconventional monetary policy tools implemented have left central banks in a tough spot in terms of an exit from these policies in an environment where economic growth and inflation targets still have not been reached ten years after the onset of the recession. One of the main criticisms by economists is the prolonged easy monetary policy implemented by central banks, which have left interest rates at near zero levels since the recession and are just …

Demonetization, The Movement To An Electronic Payments System And The Inch Towards Full Financial Inclusion In The Indian Economy, Satwik Srikrishnan

Senior Projects Spring 2017

There is ever-growing evidence, and importance of Financial Inclusion in economic growth and development in emerging economies like India. However, there is little-to-no information about the role of institutions engaged in digitized payments in accelerating Financial Inclusion. This paper aims to study the effects of the recent Demonetization ordinance, and its impact on Financial Inclusion in 2016, as well as the impact on recent institutional policy announcements. Additionally, It aims to assess the potential benefits of a digitized payment ecosystem and its institutional framework, in response to orders made by the Government of India and The Reserve Bank of India …

Three Essays On The Macroeconomic Impacts Of Rent Seeking, Kurt Von Seekamm

Doctoral Dissertations

Chapter 1 of this dissertation focuses on the political economy of rent seeking. Using trading in financial markets, patent litigation and managerial privilege as descriptive examples from the modern economy, it identifies situations where rent seeking opportunities occur. The challenge of correctly distinguishing between productive activities and rent seeking activities demonstrate the empirical challenges of examining rent seeking. This chapter also suggests that in addition to the opportunity cost of physical capital, modern rent seeking has a significant opportunity cost in the form of the misallocation of human capital. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between increased rent seeking, aggregate demand, …

Three Essays On U.S. Household Debt And The Sources Of Systemic Financial Fragility, Thomas Herndon

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays which analyze the role of household debt in the financial crisis of 2007-2009, and weak recovery that followed. In these essays, I pursue the following research topics: 1) Estimation of the effects of mortgage fraud on losses to foreclosure, 2) Estimation of whether loan modifications increased or decreased debt, and 3) Analyzing the historical evolution of housing finance regulation to advance a proposal for reform. While formally independent, these essays share a common theoretical perspective located at the intersection of financial macroeconomics and political economy. These essays analyze how conflicts of interest and inside …

Essays On Macroeconomics, Duksang Cho

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation is centered on economic heterogeneity endogenously derived from market imperfections or changes in technology. By introducing specific assumptions that capture a market imperfection or a change in technology, I study how the economic realities can affect resource distributions and aggregate outcomes in an equilibrium.

Chapter 1 studies the economic impacts of business groups by focusing on their pyramidal ownership structure given capital market imperfections. An entrepreneur can alleviate financial frictions by creating a pyramidal business group in which a parent firm offers its subsidiary firm internal equity finance. This endogenous creation of pyramidal business groups can beget asymmetric …

Adventures At The Zero Lower Bound: A Bayesian Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregressive Analysis Of Monetary Policy Uncertainty Shocks, Rachel M. Doehr

CMC Senior Theses

Using survey-based measures of future interest rate expectations from the Blue Chip Economic Indicators and the Survey of Professional Forecasters, we examine the relationship between monetary policy uncertainty, captured as the dispersion of interest rate forecasts, and fluctuations in real economic activity and core inflation. We use a flexible time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) model to clearly isolate the dynamic effects of shocks to monetary policy uncertainty. To further study possible a possible nonlinear relationship between monetary policy uncertainty and the macroeconomic aggregates, we extract the impulse-response functions (IRF’s) estimated at each quarter in the time series, and use a …

Privatization & Fdi: Examining Growth In Vietnam's Provinces, William T. Clark

Master's Theses

Over the past three decades many developing countries have looked toward privatizing investment markets and relying more on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to supply needed capital investment for their emerging private sectors. In their pursuit of foreign capital, developing countries have enacted several changes in economic policy and regulation in hopes of transforming formerly rural and undeveloped countries into highly urbanized centers of global production. This is particularly true for a transitioning economy such as Vietnam, which has seen increasing privatization of industry and investment since the reforms of 1986 known as “Doi Moi.” In this study I …

An Experimental Analysis Of Adaptive Learning In A Multi-Subject Economy, David Martin

Business and Economics Honors Papers

The rational expectations hypothesis (REH) has long served as a foundation in macroeconomic laws of motion. However, the assumptions of REH are likely too powerful to be representative of economic actors. This research evaluates adaptive learning, a developing alternative to rational expectations, using a multi-agent macroeconomic prediction “game.” Data was gathered from a group of students, each predicting the outcome of a single economy over time. Each agent was asked to forecast output (GDP) and inflation in each period based on historic levels of output, inflation, and interest rates. These data were then analyzed under various theoretical models of adaptive …