Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Steven P. Cassou / This essay empirically investigates the dynamics between government debt and budget deficits in the United States during a recession as opposed to an expansion. We use four different budget deficits definitions to develop a more comprehensive insight. We estimate a threshold VAR model on quarterly data from 1947: Q1 to 2016: Q3 on debt to GDP and budget deficits to GDP ratio for the United States. Specification test using LR test rejects the null for a linear VAR against nonlinear VAR. The nonlinear impulse responses indicate, with an increase to budget deficits to GDP ratio, government debt to GDP ratio rise faster during a recession as opposed to an expansion, and tend to move in a counter-cyclical manner with an increase in the output gap. We can thus infer that governments chose economic stability over fiscal balance during recessions. With an increase in government debt to GDP ratio, nonlinear impulse response show budget deficits to GDP ratio grow faster during an expansion as opposed to a recession and exhibit counter-cyclicality with an increase in the output gap. All four budget defi cits definitions depict similar pattern. Robustness check, using cyclically adjusted primary budget deficit published by the congressional Budget Office, also con rm the above findings. In this essay, we explore the presence of a long run relationship between the monetary base and the government debt using monthly data from 1942:1 to 2015:12. We apply formal statistical methods including cointegration and threshold cointegration tests to investigate the presence of a long-run relationship and estimate a threshold vector error-correction model (TVECM henceforth) to analyze the short-run dynamics. We find the presence of a threshold cointegration between the monetary base and government debt. As for the short-run dynamics, TVECM estimates show that the speed of adjustment is significant for the growth in debt equation in both regimes with the signs indicating government adjusting the debt in the short-run. But the U.S. Fed does not change the monetary base, hence we do not find any evidence of debt monetization in the U.S. We evaluate our findings over two sub-samples: 1946 to 2015 and 1946 to 2007 for robustness purposes. Findings from both sub-samples conform to our findings from the full sample. In this essay, we investigate the impacts of growth in the budget deficit and money supply on real interest rate are integral to contemporary macroeconomic policy. We employ threshold VAR and nonlinear impulse responses using quarterly data from 1959 to 2015. We find that growth in money supply and budget deficits have an asymmetric impact on inflation, short-term interest rate, and real interest rates. Growth in money supply and budget deficit tend to make the real interest rate negative in a bad state. In a good state, on the other hand, growth in money supply tend to increase the real interest rate but growth in budget deficits tend to decrease the real interest rate over the forecast horizon.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse external economic stability of the Czech Republic. The external economic stability is defined and basic theory related to especially intertemporal approach to external balances is reviewed. Special consideration is given to the transition character of the economy. The descriptive as well as econometric analysis (VAR and cointegration models) find that the Czech Republic is not dangerously imbalanced. A potential threat is found to be reresented by government budget deficits due to the problem of twin deficits.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse external economic stability of the Czech Republic. The external economic stability is defined and basic theory related to especially intertemporal approach to external balances is reviewed. Special consideration is given to the transition character of the economy. The descriptive as well as econometric analysis (VAR and cointegration models) find that the Czech Republic is not dangerously imbalanced. A potential threat is found to be reresented by government budget deficits due to the problem of twin deficits.

The paper focuses on capital market integration at sovereign bond market in eleven selected euro zone countries (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain). The first main objective is to test the degree of capital market integration before and after the crisis using Germany as a benchmark country and also among them as well. Secondly it evaluates and provides reasons of capital integration in time. The examination is applied through i) sigma convergence ii) yield spreads iii) correlation matrix iv) cointegration tests. I found almost zero yield differences before crisis. After 2008 results show segmentation in euro zone countries with certain special characteristic for countries with high credit ratings.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the inflation hedging capabilities of property shares. A common notion is that property is a good hedge against inflation. Indeed, positive correlations have been found for direct investments and inflation. However, property shares are generally perceived as a perverse inflation hedge. This discrepancy has often been quoted as evidence of property shares divergence from the development of the underlying property market. However, it has been argued that property shares should be driven by the underlying property market because the companies defining business is identified as the management of the assets themselves. More precisely the management has been recognized as the realization of rent. This paper argued that this management is long term. Moreover the inflation hedging capabilities was seen as long term because the rent is indexed with the inflation and contracts are continuously renegotiated. Cointegration is perceived as an indicator of a long term relationship between processes. Therefore this paper argued of its usefulness for the examination of the inflation hedge of property shares. However, earlier studies have found only for certain markets evidence of a weak cointegrated relationship. It has been noted that the failure to recognize a structural break might lead to the rejection of any cointegration relationship. Therefore this paper took such a possibility into account. Using an error correction framework (ECM), Property shares and inflation was found to be uncorrelated as expected. Evidence of cointegration was found, but no such evidence was found when an unknown structural break was taken into account. Therefore it was suggested as reasonable to believe that property shares is a long term inflation hedge, no matter if it is seen as a perverse inflation hedge in the short run.

No description available.

There is a limited amount of literature regarding spillover effects on inflation. The previous literature is focused on a small number of countries, and on shocks coming from demand and supply. The objective of this thesis is to investigate how a change in the European Central Bank (ECB) policy rate affects Swedish inflation in the short and long run. To this end, this thesisestimates a cointegrated vector autoregressive (CVAR) model using data for the period from 2000 to 2022. The results show that a change in the ECB rate does not have statistically significant effect on the Swedish inflation in the short run, but has statistically significant effect in the long run. The long run results do also show that an increase in the ECB rate have a positive effect on the Swedish central bank’s policy rate.

No description available.

There have been different degrees of exchange rate disequilibrium in the developing countries during recent transition or reform periods. The level of the exchange rate and its misalignment can have significant impacts on agricultural policy measures such as the Producer Support Estimates (PSEs). However, little efforts have been made to explicitly take into account the issue of exchange rate misalignment. In the conventional PSE studies the prevailing actual (nominal) exchange rates are usually used. There is general agreement that the use of actual exchange rates may introduce a bias in the PSE calculations, and that this bias can be substantial when the actual rates are significantly out of equilibrium, but there is much less agreement on the most appropriate alternative. This dissertation proposes a theoretical and an empirical model for estimating equilibrium exchange rates. Within the context of these models, the equilibrium exchange rates are argued to be determined by a group of real economic fundamentals. These fundamentals within this study include technological progress (Balassa-Samuelson effect), levels of government expenditure, world interest rate, net capital inflows, terms of trade, and openness of the economy. Base on various time series techniques and using data from India and China, sensible long-run relationships are identified between the real exchange rate and these economic fundamentals. The long-run co-integrating relationships are used to derive the equilibrium exchange rates and to gauge corresponding misalignments for the currencies in the two countries. The relevance and usefulness of the exchange rate equilibrium and disequilibrium in the calculation of the PSEs for India and China are then discussed. Results from the commodity-specific measures including the Market Price Support (MPS) and the PSE show that agricultural support levels are quite sensitive to alternative exchange rate assumptions. Specifically, exchange rate misalignments have either amplified or counteracted the direct effect on agriculture from sectoral-specific policies. With a few commodity exceptions such an indirect effect in both countries is relatively small in magnitude and dominated by the direct effect. This is also the case when the indirect effect rises substantially as a result of more misaligned exchange rates. Counterfactual MPS measure calculated assuming the exchange rate is in equilibrium with different exchange rate pass-through is also presented. It is shown that when no exchange rate pass-through to domestic prices occurs, the transfer of the indirect effect of exchange rate misalignment into the counterfactual MPS is full. But when there is exchange rate pass-through, even though partially, the transfer of indirect effect is significantly smaller. Results based on the commodity-specific PSE show that the exchange rate effect also depends on the relative importance of different PSE components. In addition to a positive impact on the direct effects measured by commodity-specific PSE compared to those measured by commodity-specific MPS, the increasing share of budgetary expenditures in India's agricultural support in recent years has resulted in more pronounced indirect effects. For China, the exchange rate effects are more similar between the PSE and the MPS measures at the commodity level because of the dominance of the MPS component relative to the budgetary payments in the PSEs. Moving from commodity-specific to aggregate measures, one can observe a similar pattern of agricultural support. However, the exchange rate effect measured by the total PSE appears to be more important: it becomes several times larger in magnitude than the direct effect in periods of severe exchange rate misalignment. The exchange rate effect when the PSE is "scaled up" from covered commodities to an estimate for the total agricultural sector is also demonstrated even though the assumption imposed by scaling-up may be unrealistic if price support is concentrated among those products included in the analysis. Since the commodity coverage in both countries tends to be incomplete and the scaling-up procedure leads to a total MPS component of greater magnitude, larger exchange rate effects are found in the scaled-up than the non-scaled-up version of the total PSEs. The impact of scaling-up on the indirect effect is proportional to the share of covered commodities in the total value of agricultural production. Again for the PSEs at both the commodity and aggregate levels, the counter factual measures indicate a full transfer of indirect effect of exchange rate when no exchange rate pass-through is assumed. A large portion of the indirect effect disappears when incomplete exchange rate pass-through is assumed resulting in a smaller transfer of the effect to the counter factual PSEs. / Ph. D.

The law of one price (LOP) plays an important role as a building block in theories of international trade and exchange rate determination. It also serves as a measure of integration for international commodity markets. The LOP states that in competitive markets after adjustment for transportation costs and trade barriers, identical commodities sold in different countries should sell for the same price when their prices are defined in a common currency. The existing economic literature provides a vast body of theoretical and empirical investigations of the validity of the LOP. In general, previous evidence is mixed and there is no unanimous LOP support or refutation. The effects of exchange rate changes on agricultural outputs have been extensively studied, but the issue of the impacts on traded non-farm produced inputs has not been explored as much. This study investigates the impact of the exchange rate ($CN/$US) on the relative prices in U.S. and Canadian agricultural markets for five major farm outputs and four non-farm produced inputs, which are traded between these two closely integrated economies. Adherence to the LOP is evaluated by examining the pass-through effects of exchange rate changes on these prices using quarterly data. The sample covers the period of 1975 - 1999, when there were substantial exchange rate movements. Regression and cointegration techniques are utilized to estimate whether and at what rate exchange rate changes are transmitted to prices. The empirical results give rise to supportive evidence in favor of the LOP for the five farm outputs. The evidence is somewhat weaker for three of the four non-farm produced inputs, and the LOP is violated for one input. / Master of Science