Thesis advisor: Susanto Basu / This dissertation examines the fluctuations of the aggregate economy when frictions in financial markets are present. I focus on the the asymmetric information problems between creditors and debtors on the quality of debtor's projects and I analyze how these frictions cause the fluctuations in aggregate economy which is potentially inefficient. The first chapter examines the interaction between the perverse incentives and the general equilibrium effects of misallocated bank credit. This essay is intended to elucidate the mechanism of zombie lending in Japan. By incorporating a soft budget problem into a neo-classical dynamic general equilibrium model, the model shows that an inefficient zombie lending regime can be selected as an equilibrium. In this equilibrium, the incentives and the general equilibrium effects are interdependent. The inefficient use of resources crowds out investment when banks have incentives to bail out insolvent firms. On the other hand, the general equilibrium effects give rise to the perverse incentives endogenously through the formation of the liquidation value and the continuation value of insolvent firms. In the worst case, agents fail to resolve non-performing loan problems, and the model economy permanently falls into an inefficient regime. The second chapter proposes a model that generate boom-and-bust cycles by securitization of subprime mortgages. I construct a dynamic housing choice model in which mortgages are financed by securitization and I assume that creditors have errors in measuring the default risks of subprime mortgages. With this setup, the resource availability for housing fluctuates endogenously and it causes the boom-and-bust cycles. Particularly, there are two channels that change the resource availability: the security design of the securitized assets and the evolution of house price inflation. I illustrate that subprime mortgages can be cheaply financed by securitization when creditors mismeasure the quality of the subprime mortgages. This ignites a boom in the model. However, the boom can be terminated as the profitability of securitization declines along with the decline in the expectation of house price inflation. This is because the house price inflation is tied with the liquidation value of the defaulted mortgages. As the expectation of the house price inflation slows down, the subprime mortgages become more risky and the securitization becomes less profitable. Eventually, issuers of securitized assets withdraw from the securitization market and the boom collapses. The last chapter explores the transmission mechanisms of international business cycles when the borrowing capacity of multinational enterprises (MNEs) is limited. I embed MNEs that face borrowing constraints in a two-country international business cycle model. I show that the net worth of MNEs plays a significant role in generating the international business cycle co-movement: the wealth effect in response to the change in MNEs' net worth has a strong multiplier effect on domestic and foreign investment of MNEs. Output moves in the same direction between the two countries due to the synchronized investment. The model is also able to generate reasonable cross-country correlations in real estate price and consumption. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Esse trabalho faz um estudo sobre a hipótese de descolamento das relações de curto e longo prazo entre os PIBs das economias brasileira e norte-americana. Para isso, é realizado, inicialmente, uma análise da literatura existente sobre a possível mudança nas relações entre as economias emergentes e avançadas. Em seguida, foram apresentadas explicações teóricas para as ligações entre os PIBs de Brasil e dos Estados Unidos da América. As metodologias usadas na investigação foram a análise de cointegração e a decomposição dos produtos internos brutos dos países em questão. Os principais resultados, obtidos usando dados anuais entre 1980 e 2008, apontam para uma mudança importante nas relações de longo prazo entre as economias a partir da década de 1980 e uma intensificação das relações de curto prazo a partir da década de 1990. No entanto, ao longo dos anos e, principalmente a partir da metade da década de 2000, foram encontradas evidências em favor de um maior descolamento de curto prazo dos PIBs de Brasil e EUA. / The following dissertation tests the hypothesis of decoupling between the Brazilian and North American economies. For this purpose, the related literature is initially investigated. Afterwards, theoretical explanations on the links between the GDPs of Brazil and USA are shown. The methodologies employed were cointegration analysis and trend/cycle decomposition of the GDPs of the mentioned countries. The main findings using annual data between 1980 and 2008 point out to an important change in the long term relationship between the economies starting in the 1980s and an increase in the short-run links during the 1990s. However, there is evidence suggesting a decoupling of the short term fluctuations between Brazils and USAs GDPs starting in the second half of the 2000s.

Modern macroeconomic models with a Keynesian flavour usually involve nominal rigidities in wages and goods prices. A typical model is static and combines wage bargaining in the labour markets and monopolistic competition in the goods markets. As central policy implication it follows that deregulating labour and/or goods markets increases equilibrium employment. We reassess the consequences of deregulation in a dynamic model. It still increases employment at the fixed point, which corresponds to the static equilibrium solution. However, deregulation may also lead to stability loss and endogenous fluctuations. / Series: Working Papers Series "Growth and Employment in Europe: Sustainability and Competitiveness"

Li Zimu. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-68). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.ii / 中文摘要 --- p.iii / Acknowledgements --- p.iv / Contents --- p.v / Chapter Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 2. --- Literature Review --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1 --- Duration Dependence in Business Cycles --- p.5 / Chapter 2.2 --- Duration Dependence in Stock Market Cycles --- p.7 / Chapter 2.3 --- Definition of Bull and Bear Markets --- p.10 / Chapter Chapter 3. --- Nonparametric Tests for Duration Dependence --- p.12 / Chapter 3.1 --- Duration Dependence --- p.12 / Chapter 3.2 --- Stock Market Cycle Periodicity --- p.15 / Chapter 3.3 --- W and W (t0 =a) Tests --- p.18 / Chapter 3.4 --- Z and Z (t0 =a) Tests --- p.20 / Chapter Chapter 4. --- Data Analysis --- p.21 / Chapter 4.1 --- Dow Jones Industrial Average Index --- p.23 / Chapter 4.2 --- NASDAQ Composite Index --- p.29 / Chapter 4.3 --- Shanghai A Share Index --- p.33 / Chapter 4.4 --- Shenzhen B Share Index --- p.38 / Chapter Chapter 5. --- Empirical Results --- p.42 / Chapter 5.1 --- Dow Jones Industrial Average Index --- p.45 / Chapter 5.2 --- NASDAQ Composite Index --- p.47 / Chapter 5.3 --- Shanghai A Share Index --- p.49 / Chapter 5.4 --- Shenzhen B Share Index --- p.51 / Chapter 5.5 --- Summary of Significant W and Z tests --- p.53 / Chapter Chapter 6. --- Sub-sample Analysis --- p.54 / Chapter 6.1 --- Sub-sample 1 of the Dow Jones Index´ؤ --- p.56 / Chapter 6.2 --- Sub-sample 2 of the Dow Jones Index´ؤ --- p.57 / Chapter 6.3 --- Comparison of Sub-samples of the Dow Jones Index --- p.58 / Chapter 6.4 --- Comparison of the Dow Jones Index and the NASDAQ Composite Index --- p.60 / Chapter Chapter 7. --- Conclusion --- p.62 / References --- p.65

Na trajetória da economia mundial, destaca-se a importância do agronegócio, que exerce um papel essencial no desenvolvimento econômico e social dos países, devido principalmente à sua capacidade de geração de renda e empregos. Entretanto, o agronegócio possui um obstáculo para a sua sustentabilidade, que é sua natureza cíclica, sofrendo influências de vários fatores de mercado e apresentando elevada volatilidade nos preços das commodities. Nesse sentido, vê-se a necessidade de explorar o aspecto cíclico dos preços das commodities, com o intuito de captar a dinâmica dos fatores de mercado que influenciam a formação do preço, para o seu monitoramento antecipado. Dentro desse contexto, o objetivo do presente estudo foi propor o desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta para prever o comportamento dos ciclos de crescimento e retração de uma commodity, especificamente o açúcar, com base no modelo de indicador antecedente. Para isso, foi construído, primeiramente, o ciclo de preços agrícolas, com base nos ciclos de negócios e na exposição das estruturas que representam os principais fatores de alteração nos preços das commodities: econômica, fundamentalista, climática e relacionada. O próximo passo foi datar os pontos de mudança do preço do açúcar, utilizando um modelo de cadeia de Markov e confrontando seus resultados com os acontecimentos históricos do setor. Posteriormente, um modelo de fator dinâmico foi utilizado para extrair movimentos cíclicos comuns a um conjunto de variáveis que apresentam poder de previsão, fora de amostra, com relação ao preço do açúcar. Como resultado, foram encontrados três indicadores antecedentes, que sinalizaram consistentemente a maioria dos picos e vales do ciclo do preço do açúcar, num horizonte de dois anos de antecedência. Cada indicador selecionado é composto por uma combinação linear entre os coeficientes e quatro variáveis independentes, as quais representam, respectivamente, as estruturas setoriais analisadas: fundamentalista, econômica, climática e relacionada. Em seguida, os indicadores foram combinados com o preço em um vetor bivariado auto-regressivo para obter previsões lineares do preço da commodity açúcar. As previsões obtidas revelam que os indicadores apresentaram um desempenho de previsão bem superior ao do modelo base, em todos os horizontes, e muito próximo aos valores reais dos preços. Portanto, da análise de previsão de pontos de mudança e de previsão linear, conclui-se que os indicadores antecedentes da commodity açúcar (IAC) constituem-se em um instrumento informativo para sinalizar o comportamento futuro do preço do açúcar, mesmo quando apenas dados preliminares e não revisados estão disponíveis. A ferramenta proposta, além de servir como um instrumento para compreender a natureza das flutuações dos preços das commodities, pretende tornar-se fonte de subsídios para o projeto de diretrizes, ações e formulação de estratégias de desenvolvimento, tanto no âmbito das políticas públicas, quanto daquelas iniciativas que deveriam ser adotadas pelo setor privado, servindo como um instrumento essencial para o planejamento das instituições integrantes do agronegócio. / In the course of the world economy, underscoring the importance of agribusiness, which plays a key role in economic and social development of countries, mainly due to its ability to generate income and jobs. However, agribusiness has an obstacle to its sustainability, which is its cyclical nature, is influenced by various market factors and a very high volatility in commodity prices. In this sense, we see the need to explore the cyclical aspect of commodity prices, in order to capture the dynamics of market factors that influence the pricing for its monitoring anticipated. Within this context, the objective of this study was to propose the development of a tool to predict the behavior of cycles of growth and shrinkage of a commodity, specifically sugar, based on the type of leading indicator. For that was built first, the cycle of agricultural prices, based on business cycles and exposure of the structures that represent the main factors of change in commodity prices: economic fundamentalism, climate and related. The next step was dating the turning points of the price of sugar, using a model of Markov chain, comparing their results with historical events in the industry. Subsequently, a dynamic factor model was used to extract common cyclical movements in a set of variables that have predictive power, out of the sample to the price of sugar. As a result, there were three leading indicators, which signaled consistently most of the peaks and valleys of the cycle of the price of sugar, a horizon of two years in advance. Each indicator selected is composed of a linear combination of the coefficients and four independent variables, which represent, respectively, industry structures analyzed: fundamentalist, economic, climate and related. Then, the indicators were combined with the price in a bivariate vector autoregressive forecasts for linear price of crude sugar. The predictions show that the indicators showed a predictive performance far superior to the base model at all horizons, and very close to the actual values of prices. Therefore, the analysis of forecasting turning points and linear prediction, it is concluded that the leading indicators of crude sugar (IAC) is based on an informative tool for signaling future behavior of the price of sugar, even when only preliminary data not reviewed are available. The proposed tool, besides serving as a tool to understand the nature of fluctuations in commodity prices, hopes to become a source of input for the draft guidelines, actions and formulation of development strategies, both in the public policies and those initiatives that should be adopted by the private sector, serving as an essential tool for planning of institutions of agribusiness.

This dissertation combines micro-level empirical analyses and general equilibrium models to study the issues of output price, price-cost markup, and business cycle dynamics. In the first chapter, I study how a credit crunch affects output price dynamics. I build a unique micro-level dataset that combines scanner-level prices and quantities with producer information, including the producer's banking relationships, inventory, and cash holdings. I exploit the Lehman Brothers' failure as a quasi-experiment and find that firms facing a negative credit supply shock decrease their output prices approximately 15% relative to their unaffected counterparts. I hypothesize that such firms reduce prices to liquidate inventory and to generate additional cash flow from the product market. I find strong empirical support for this hypothesis: (i) firms facing a negative bank shock temporarily decrease their prices and inventory and increase their market share and cash holdings relative to their counterparts, and (ii) this effect is stronger for firms and sectors with high initial inventory or small initial cash holdings. To discuss the aggregate implications of these findings, I integrate this micro-level study into a business cycle model by explicitly allowing for two identical groups of producers facing different degrees of credit supply shock. The model predicts that a negative credit supply shock leads to a large temporary drop in aggregate inflation---as a result of the aggressive liquidation of inventory---followed by an increase in inflation as producers eventually run out of inventory. This prediction for inflation and inventory dynamics is fully consistent with observations for the 2007-09 recession. In the second chapter, I study price-cost markup cyclicality. Existing empirical evidence on price-cost markup cyclicality is mixed. I find that markups are procyclical unconditionally, and procyclical conditional on demand shock using a flexible production function. The estimated production function features a larger input complementarity than that in a tightly parametrized production function (Cobb-Douglas and CES), producing both greater efficiency and higher markups during an expansion. These results have two striking implications: (i) much of the cyclicality in markups arises from input complementarity, rather than nominal rigidity, and (ii) the U.S. economy behaves as if it has increasing returns to scale. The third chapter studies the business cycle with a Translog production function. We empirically identify a complementarity between labor and energy that leads to procyclical returns to scale, which is not compatible with the tightly parameterized production function commonly used in the literature (Cobb-Douglas and CES). We, therefore, propose a flexible Translog production function that not only features complementarity-induced procyclical returns to scale but is also consistent with a balanced growth path. A simple calibrated business cycle model with the proposed production function generates strikingly data-consistent dynamics following demand shock without relying on either nominal rigidities or countercyclical markups. Our model also produces a stronger amplification effect than the model without complementarity. We then incorporate our production function into a benchmark medium-scale New Keynesian model (Smets and Wouters 2007) and repeat the business cycle accounting exercise. We find that input complementarity leads to a more dramatic decrease in the role of ''suspicious shocks" than of ''structural shocks."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 320-328. / by Marie Isabel Howland. / Ph.D.

In the first chapter of this dissertation, I estimate the cyclicality of real wages for job stayers, and hires from both employment and from unemployment, using an administrative matched employer-employee dataset from Germany. I find that the wages of new hires appear to be lessprocyclical than the wages of job stayers. I propose an explanation based on countercyclical selection on match quality: when aggregate productivity is low, worker-firm matches have to be unusually productive to warrant job creation. The presence of the match quality selection effect is supported by the relationship between the initial aggregate conditions and the subsequent risk of separation: jobs started when unemployment is high are at a decreased risk of ending with a separation to unemployment, which suggests that they are positively selected. Motivated by the findings of the first chapter, I build a Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides search and matching model with match-specific productivity and turnover costs. The model-generated wages and job durations have cyclical properties empirically established in the previous chapter: the wages of new hires are less procyclical than the wages of job stayers, and jobs started when productivity is high are at a higher risk of subsequent separation. I show that the relative cyclical properties of wages are generated by changes in average match-specific productivity for new hires relative to job stayers. Match-specific productivity is subjected to countercyclical selection: when aggregate productivity is low, match-specific productivity has to high to justify creating or maintaining a match. Due to turnover costs, countercyclical selection for new hires is stronger than for job stayers. Low match-specific productivity of matches started when aggregate productivity is high generates the positive relationship between initial aggregate productivity and subsequent risk of separation. In the third chapter, I examine the behavior of wages within employment spells, before separation from a job and after movement between jobs in order to evaluate hypotheses concerning job-to-job transitions. Using German administrative microdata, I establish three empirical findings. First, the properties of wage changes within employment spells and associated with job-to-job transitions are broadly similar. Second, wages deteriorate in the year preceding separation from a job, for all separations, including job-to-job transitions. The wage deterioration manifests as slower wage growth and lowering of real wages expected given workers' characteristics. Third, for job-to-job transitions wage growth after accession is faster if the initial wage is lower than the last wage in the previous job. This effect is not present for job-unemployment-job transitions. The second finding supports the notion that some job-to-job transitions are induced by the worsened job situation. The third suggests that, to some extent, workers might voluntarily make job-to-job transition that decreases their wages in expectation of higher wage growth in the future.

Abstract not available

Since the Euro has founded in 1999, the Asian Currency has become an important issue. The most important prerequisite for adopting common currency for the countries in the area is the synchronization of business cycle. This paper analyses the degree and responses of business cycles for Asian countries when they face to the common shocks. The empirical findings from this paper can be summarized as follows. First, the shocks of Japanese economy are more important to Asian countries than the shocks from the United States, except for Thailand and Indonesia. Second, Malaysia and the Philippine are substantially influenced by the Thailand. Therefore, the Asian economy is evidently forming its regional (or bloc) economy continually. The findings from this paper are in the same line with the result from Hazel (2001), who concludes the business cycles of Japan and Korea are commoved. The degree of synchronization of business cycles for Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippine are quite high as well.