Macroeconomics Commons^™

Converting The Social Security Trust Fund Into A Sovereign Wealth Fund: A Proposal To Secure The Future, Keanu Moore

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This thesis proposes the conversion of the Social Security Trust Fund into a sovereign wealth fund (SWF), paired with the phased creation of a mandatory retirement savings system for all working-age Americans. In response to forecasts projecting Trust Fund depletion by 2034, the proposed portfolio shift would diversify assets beyond U.S. Treasuries into global equities, real estate, alternatives, and fixed income, with the goal of enhancing long-term returns while remaining passively managed. While this reform would extend the Fund’s solvency, it is not, on its own, a permanent fix. To ensure structural sustainability beyond the exhaustion date, the thesis proposes …

Driving Green Investments To Address Climate Change, Baptiste Gibrat

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The climate crisis is no longer news, and society needs to accelerate the transition to net zero emissions. Otherwise, the consequences of climate change will become increasingly catastrophic.

This thesis develops a framework to drive green investments, which reduce society’s dependance on fossil fuels. Initially, the research provides a comprehensive examination of these investments, followed by an exploration of three strategies to enhance their adoption: leveraging financial instruments and capital markets, implementing regulatory frameworks, and harnessing the power of technologies. To integrate these elements within a comprehensive framework, the study employs market research, reviews relevant literature, and includes interviews with …

The New China Model: Combating Economic And Political Order, Jack R. Swords

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Contemporary world politics centers around the actions of the two largest powers on Earth, the United States and China. They are both each other’s greatest adversary yet at the same time are each other’s largest trading partners. This thesis explores the nature of China’s economic climate that has seen it grow to one of the world’s foremost powers. However, the East Asian Nation faces economic challenges centered around the three D’s: Debt, Deflation, and Demographics. This thesis analyses what the nature of these challenges are and how China is responding to them within the ever-advancing world of economic and political …

The Digital Commercial Revolution: U.S. Business Sales And The Entrepreneurial Exploitation Of Information And Communications Technology, John T. Scott

Dartmouth Scholarship

Businesses have taken the opportunities, made possible by information and communications technology (ICT), to develop and use digital platform services and other digital tools to support sales. This paper estimates a model of U.S. business sales and uses the estimated model to assess the economic impact of the digital commercial revolution of the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The estimations show that the entrepreneurial initiatives—that drove the digital revolution in commerce by capitalizing on the new technologies made available by the ICT revolution—came to fruition in the wake of the Great Recession. For 2019, the last year before …

Dollarization In Latin America: The Effect On Macroeconomic Outcomes In El Salvador And Ecuador, John Stephen Petrich

Quantitative Social Science Undergraduate Senior Theses

This paper examines full dollarization in Latin America and the experience of El Salvador, Panama and Ecuador using the U.S. Dollar as their sole currency. This is accomplished by comparing key macroeconomic indicators in these countries to both their pre-dollarization experience and a control group of the largest economies in the region from 1986 to 2019. Special attention is paid to the comparison between El Salvador which fully dollarized and Guatemala which partially dollarized in 2001. A gravity model using a difference in differences analysis found no significant increase in bilateral trade with the United States relative to the control …

The ‘Security Pacific Letter’: Estimating The Causal Effect Of Securitization On Banks’ Systemic Exposure, Paul-Angelo Dell'isola

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

This paper aims to test the hypothesis of the ‘Safe Asset narrative’

which states that banks became manufacturers of pseudo safe assets to meet

a global shortage of safe assets in the pre-crisis period. In this narrative,

securitization is the mechanism which enables banks to become underwriters

of safe assets. This paper takes this hypothesis to the data and attempts to

estimate the causal effect of securitization on banks’ systemic exposure. In

particular, this paper exploits a regulatory change that occurred in 1987 when

the OCC expanded the scope of assets US national banks could securitize. By

using state-chartered banks …

Modeling The Economic Machine Using Bayesian Inference And Statistical Networks, And Optimal Portfolio Construction Using Operations Research, Richard Yang

ENGS 88 Honors Thesis (AB Students)

In this paper, we propose a network-based model to attempt to connect modern macroeconomic theory with real world economic observations and trends. We find that by extending macroeconomic theory with credit leveraging/deleveraging thresholds, we are able to explain economic cycles in addition to long-term growth. Furthermore, we specifically explore the growth-inflation view of the macro economy as a basis for optimal portfolio construction and efficient asset trading. Connecting our network-based macroeconomic model and our optimal portfolio construction algorithm, we create a novel macroeconomic asset-trading framework.

Medium Term Business Cycles In Developing Countries, Diego Comin, Norman Loayza, Farooq Pasha, Luis Serven

Dartmouth Scholarship

Business cycle fluctuations in developed economies (N) tend to have large and persistent e§ects on developing countries (S). We study the transmission of business cycle fluctuations for developed to developing economies with a two-country asymmetric DSGE model with two features: (i) endogenous and slow diffusion of technologies from the developed to the developing country, and (ii) adjustment costs to investment flows. Consistent with the model we observe that the flow of technologies from N to S co-moves positively with output in both N and S. After calibrating the model to Mexico and the U.S., it can explain the following stylized …

Five Facts About Value-Added Exports And Implications For Macroeconomics And Trade Research, Robert C. Johnson

Dartmouth Scholarship

Due to the rise of global supply chains, gross exports do not accurately measure the amount of value added exchanged between countries. I highlight five facts about differences between gross and value-added exports. These differences are large and growing over time, currently around 25 percent, and manufacturing trade looks more important, relative to services, in gross than value-added terms. These differences are also heterogenous across countries and bilateral partners, and changing unevenly across countries and partners over time. Taking these differences into account enables researchers to obtain better quantitative answers to important macroeconomic and trade questions. I discuss how the …

Financial Stability, The Trilemma, And International Reserves, Maurice Obstfeld, Jay C. Shambaugh, Alan M. Taylor

Dartmouth Scholarship

The rapid growth of international reserves, a development concentrated in the emerging markets, remains a puzzle. In this paper, we suggest that a model based on financial stability and financial openness goes far toward explaining reserve holdings in the modern era of globalized capital markets. The size of domestic financial liabilities that could potentially be converted into foreign currency (M2), financial openness, the ability to access foreign currency through debt markets, and exchange rate policy are all significant predictors of reserve stocks. Our empirical financial-stability model seems to outperform both traditional models and recent explanations based on external short-term debt.

The Economics Of Prefunding Social Security And Medicare Benefits, Martin Feldstein, Andrew Samwick

Dartmouth Scholarship

This paper presents a detailed analysis of the economics of prefunding benefits for the aged, focusing on social security but indicating some of the analogous magnitudes for prefunding Medicare benefits. We use detailed census and social security information to model the transition to a fully funded system based on mandatory contributions to individual accounts. The funded system that we examine would permanently maintain the level of benefits now specified in current law and would require no new government borrowing (other than eventually selling the bonds that are officially in the social security trust fund). During the transition, the combined rate …