[pt] Neste trabalho analisamos a política monetária brasileira em relação a um grupo de países que seguem o regime de metas para a inflação. Nossos resultados indicam que muitos países tiveram mudanças na política monetária, detectadas através de uma quebra na função de reação empírica dos bancos centrais, no período entre 2007 e 2009, possivelmente relacionadas com a crise financeira global. Encontramos evidências que o banco central brasileiro reduziu sua resposta aos desvios da inflação em relação à meta após esta mudança e também que as expectativas de inflação ficaram desancoradas, sugerindo uma inconsistência com o regime de metas para inflação. Apesar de termos detectado quebras na maioria dos países que seguem o regime de metas, as duas mudanças acima não ocorreram na maior parte dos países. Desta forma, utilizamos esses países para aplicar o método do controle sintético e estimar qual seria a trajetória da taxa de inflação e crescimento do PIB, caso não tivesse ocorrido tal mudança na política monetária brasileira. Os resultados do método do controle sintético sugerem que a mudança na política monetária brasileira resultou em uma taxa de inflação notavelmente maior em relação à trajetória sintética, ou seja, a inflação caso não tivesse ocorrida a mudança na política monetária; e um crescimento do PIB mais volátil, com ganhos limitados no período após a mudança e um crescimento menor nos anos seguintes, comparativamente à trajetória sintética do crescimento do PIB. / [en] In this dissertation, we analyze the Brazilian monetary policy and a group of countries under inflation targeting. Our results indicate that many countries had changes in monetary policy, detected through a break in the central bank reaction function between 2007 and 2009, possibly related to the global financial crisis. We find evidence that the Brazilian central bank lowered its response to inflation deviations from the target and also that inflation expectations became unanchored, suggesting an inconsistency with the inflation targeting regime. Although we detected breaks in almost every country, the two above changes did not occur in most of the countries. Thus, we used these countries to apply the synthetic control method and estimate the trajectory of inflation and GDP growth if the Brazilian central bank had not changed its monetary policy. The results of the synthetic control method suggest that the change in the Brazilian monetary policy resulted in higher inflation and a more volatile GDP dynamic, with limited gains in the period after the change and lower growth in the following years, compared to the synthetic trajectory.

The contribution of this thesis is to build a small macro-econometric model of the Namibian economy, which demonstrates that there is significant statistical support for the hypothesis that there is a contemporaneous relationship between real wage, productivity, unemployment and interest rates in Namibia. This phenomenon has not yet been exploited using macro-econometric modelling, and thus, represents a significant contribution to modelling literature in Namibia. The determination of the sources of unemployment also receives special attention given that high unemployment is a chronic problem in Namibia. All models specified and estimated in the study use the SVAR methodology for the period 1980 to 2013. The study develops a small macro-econometric model using three modular experiments, which include, a basic model, models that separately append demand and exchange rate channels variables to the basic model, and the specification of a small macro-econometric model. The ultimate aim is to find out if monetary policy plays a role in influencing labour market and nominal variables. The hypothesis that the basic real wage, productivity, unemployment rate and interest rate system can be estimated simultaneously is validated. Further, demand and exchange rate channels variables are found to have important additional information, which explains the monetary transmission process, and that shocks to labour market variables affect monetary policy in Namibia. The results also show that the demand channel (import prices and bank credit to the private sector) and the exchange rate channel (nominal exchange rate) variables have important additional information, which affects monetary transmission process in Namibia, which justifies their inclusion in the small macro-econometric model. In addition, shocks to the import price and exchange rate in the macro-econometric model significantly affect labour market variables. However, shocks to bank credit only partially perform as expected, implying that its results need to be considered cautiously. The study further finds that tight monetary policy shocks significantly affect real and nominal variables in Namibia. The results also show that shocks to all variables in the unemployment model significantly affect unemployment, suggesting that the hysteresis assumption is corroborated. This implies that long run aggregate demand is non-neutral in Namibia. / Economics / D. Litt. et Phil. (Economics)