This thesis deals with various issues regarding determinants of US corporate credit spreads. These spreads are estimated as the difference between yields to maturity for corporate bonds and default-free instruments (Treasury bonds) of the same maturity. Corporate credit spreads are considered as measures of default risk. However, the premium required by investors for holding risky rather than risk-free bonds will incorporate a compensation not only for the default risk but also for other factors related to corporate bonds such as market liquidity or tax differential between corporate and Treasury bonds. In this study we firstly examine the relationship between bond ratings and credit spreads given that bond rating changes are expected to carry some informational value for debt investors. The findings indicate that bond ratings generally carry some informational value for corporate bond investors. The Granger causal relationship is more evident for negative watch lists and during periods of uncertainty in financial markets. In line with previous studies, our results suggest that changes in credit spreads are significantly related to interest rate levels, systematic risk factors (Fama and French) factors and equity returns.

Multinational bank activities have gradually risen in developing countries since the beginning of the globalisation process. Rising foreign bank activities in developing countries have motivated researchers to investigate foreign banks, comprehensively. Turkey is a typical example of a developing country that achieved a tremendous growth rate in foreign bank asset, especially throughout the last decade. The aim of this thesis is to examine two-way linkage; (1) between foreign bank penetration (FBP) and banking variables; (2) between FBP and country risk and (3) between FBP, foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign portfolio investment (FPI) in Turkey. Therefore, this thesis is constructed by three empirical sections. Moreover the pattern of FDI inflow and outflow in the world and in Turkey has been analysed, chronologically. In addition, the theory of FDI is taken into account and existing FDI theories has been criticised. In the first empirical work – Chapter 3 - the short run and long run relationship, if it exits, between FBP and determinants of bank performance (namely, domestic bank assets, domestic credit and banking profitability) in Turkey was investigated after controlling DGDP and 2001 financial crisis (DUM2001). The outcome of the Granger causality test indicates that there was unilateral causality which runs from DDB to DFBP . Moreover, I also found feedback causality between DFBP and DCREDIT . By employing impulse response functions, I found that there is positive relationship between DFBP and DCREDIT as I expected. Moreover, the response of DFBP to one standard deviation shock in domestic bank assets is initially statistically significant and positive. The reverse effect is statistically significant and positive. In the final model, the response of DFBP to one standard deviation shock in profitability (PRO) is significant and positive at 3rd quarter. The reverse effect is surprisingly positive but not statistically significant. Specifically, what has not been also investigated deeply in the empirical literature is the two-way linkage between foreign bank penetration and risk such as political, financial and economic. Thus, in chapter 4, linkage between FBP and country risk (namely, political risk, economic risk and financial risk) was examined in Turkey using quarterly data from 1994Q1 to 2009Q4. My finding indicated that I found one error correction term significant and positive in bivariate vector error correction in model 1 and 2, implying that in the long run, foreign bank penetration has contributed to economic and political risk. Moreover, short run causality based on VAR approach between DFBP and financial risk is investigated but I failed to find any significant causality in the VAR model after controlling DGDP and 2001 financial crisis, even at the 10% level. By analysing impulse response functions, I could not detect any significant relationship between DFBP and host country risk variables in the short run. This is because adding control variables (DGDP and DUM2001) make the relationship between host country risk variables and DFBP statistically insignificant. Finally, I investigated two-way linkage between FBP, FPI and FDI in Turkey after controlling DGDP and 2001 financial crisis. The finding from the VAR based block exogeneity wald test indicated that changes in DFBP significantly lead to changes in DFDI and there is also unilateral causality which runs from FPI to DFBP. Moreover, using the variance decomposition technique I found that DFDI and FPI have little explanatory power for the evolution of DFBP in Turkey. The contribution of DFBP to the variability of DFDI is more than that of FPI. The contribution of DFDI to FPI variability ranges between 0.000% and 9.122% throughout 12 quarter periods whilst the contribution of DFBP to FPI variability ranges between 0.000% and 7.611%.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to determine what type of causative relationship between FDI and GDP exists in Lithuania. The analysis includes assessment of the overall economic situation in the country, analysis of historical statistical data on FDI, overview of existing studies and regression analysis. The regression is performed in order to reveal the impact of various economic factors on GDP growth. The model in question includes such economic indicators as corruption perceptions level index, harmonized consumer price index, net export, foreign investments via liabilities and FDI. Firstly, Granger causality test is performed in order to see whether FDI Granger causes GDP. Then, after making corrections for sequences to be stationary, a regression is performed using ordinary least squares method. The results of the analysis show that there is no statistically significant impact of FDI on economic growth in Lithuania. Nevertheless, foreign investments of other type had a great influence on economic performance in the past several years. However, due to their nature economic growth could not be sustained. The reasons for FDI having no influence over the economic growth in Lithuania are seen in the fact of scarcity of the investments, country’s inability to attract foreign investors, corruption existence, and unstable taxing system. Recommendations are provided on the matter. / Darbo tikslas – nustatyti koks egzistuoja ryšys tarp tiesioginių užsienio investicijų (TUI) ir BVP augimo Lietuvoje. Darbe analizuojama dabartinė šalies ekonominė situacija, TUI statistiniai duomenys, apžvelgiama susijusi literatūra bei moksliniai straipsniai, atliekama regresinė analizė. Regresinės analizės tikslas – nustatyti kokią įtaką ekonominiam augimui daro į modelį įtraukti kintamieji. Į regresinį modelį įeina korupcijos lygio indeksas, suderintas vartotojų kainų indeksas, grynasis eksportas, kitos užsienio investicijos ir TUI. Pirmiausia atliekamas Grendžerio duomenų analizės testas, kuris nustato ar TUI gali dinamiškai paaiškinti BVP augimo tempus. Tuomet, atlikus laiko eilučių stacionarumo korekcijas, mažiausių kvadratų metodu įvertinama tiesinė regresija. Analizės rezultatai parodė, kad TUI neturi statistiškai reikšmingos įtakos ekonominiam augimui Lietuvoje. Tačiau kitos užsienio investicijos, pastaraisiais metais ekonominiam vystymuisi turėjo didelę įtaką, nors dėl jų pobūdžio, stabilus ekonomikos augimas nebuvo užtikrintas. Galima įvardinti pagrindines priežastis, dėl kurių TUI neturėjo įtakos ekonominiam augimui Lietuvoje – tai investicijų trūkumas, šalies nesugebėjimas pritraukti užsienio investuotojus, korupcija ir nestabili mokesčių sistema. Darbo pabaigoje pateikiamos rekomendacijos.

Objective. Family Therapy (FT) and Family Management (FM) approaches to psychosis have been divided by their understanding of causality. FM holds a biological understanding which has been identified as having negative consequences for the person with psychosis. FT, by exploring family interactions has been criticised for blaming families for causing their relations psychosis. These two approaches have now been integrated, but how causality is discussed in an integrated approach has only now been explored. Design and methods. This qualitative research asked clinicians working in the most established integrated service how they discuss causality. Four focus groups were conducted and a framework approach using thematic analysis was used. Results. Five themes were explored; uncomfortable discussion; constructing a shared understanding; therapeutic style; limiting exploration; and blame. Conclusion. Discussing causality with families was identified as uncomfortable. However, through the development of a therapeutic-relationship three identified tools can be used to construct a shared understanding of causality. The therapeutic style of explorative conversation--based in FT, integrated with the stress-vulnerability model--based in FM, was identified as an important aspect of an integrated model that resolved criticisms levied at each individual approach. Factors that limited exploration were identified as major challenges to causality discussions, but techniques to remedy these problems were also identified. The risk of families feeling blamed/blaming themselves and attempts to avoid/reduce blame made up a dominant theme of the research. The research concludes by challenging the need to avoid/reduce blame, arguing that blame should be openly explored within family interventions.

The objectives of the thesis - which comprises six parts – can be summarized in i) implementing linear and nonlinear/nonparametric approaches toward detecting, measuring and analyzing the nature and directionality of causal relationships in financial markets, ii) elaborating on modern topics in financial investment analysis, iii) probing into the role of commodity futures in constructing optimal portfolios as well as iv) investigating growth dynamics via aggregated and disaggregated indices. The first paper named “Analyzing causal interactions between sectoral equity returns and commodity futures returns in the aftermath of the global financial crisis: The case of the US and EU equity returns”, aims to explore and compare the dependence and co-movement structure between commodity and various asset classes’ returns including the USA and EU stock markets via the use of linear and non-linear causality testing in a comparative context with the additional adjustment for cointegration and conditional heteroscedasticity. The findings provide important implications for optimal asset allocation and portfolio diversification with respect to various market conditions, namely both in “good” and “bad” (crisis) times. The second paper is entitled “On the time scale behaviour of Equity-Commodity links: Implications for Portfolio Management”, and has been published in the Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money (2016). The study is co-authored with Professors S. Bekiros, D.K. Nguyen, and B. Sjö. It develops a holistic framework for the investigation of the multi-horizon and intra-frequency causal directionalities of various asset classes, by means of multi-resolution analysis. The results verify the assumption that financial markets exhibit time-varying co-movement patterns, which are fundamentally important in a) generating profitable trading strategies according to different investor horizon expectations and b) decoding the financialization mechanism across various asset classes. The third paper entitled “Business Cycle (de) Synchronization in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis: Implications for the Euro Area”, was published at Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics (2015) and is co-authored with S. Bekiros, D.K Nguyen and B. Sjö. In this work, the scale-dependent time-varying (de)synchronization effects between the Eurozone and the broad Euro area business cycles are revealed, before and after the global financial crisis. The results, which point towards an increased observed comovement during the crisis period for the Euro area, could be catalytic for the introduction of a more efficient monetary policy by EU institutions and in particular by the European Central Bank. In the fourth paper, “Do financial stress and policy uncertainty have an impact on the energy and metals markets? A quantile regression approach”, which was published in the International Review of Economics and Finance (2016) and co-authored with J.C. Reboredo, the financial and policy uncertainty is investigated in relation to the price dynamics of energy and metal commodity futures’ markets. This work lead to the analysis of the asymmetric interrelationships with respect to changes in the perceptions of various risk measures, covering various periods, i.e., “normal” vs. “turbulent” such as upward or downward market episodes. The fifth paper, co-authored with P. Andreasson, S. Bekiros and D.K. Nguyen, is entitled “The impact of speculation and economic uncertainty on commodity markets”, and is published in the International Review of Financial Analysis (2016). This paper attempts a novel methodological approach to measuring speculation in commodity markets, in particular whether market speculation drives agricultural commodity prices or viceversa. The assessment of the empirical analysis demonstrates that agricultural prices are not affected by speculation. Finally, the sixth paper “Energy and Output Dynamics in Bangladesh”, co-authored with B.P. Paul, was published in Energy Economics (2011) and explores the relationship between energy utilization and economic growth in Bangladesh. Specifically, it deals with the important issue of whether energy consumption can be reduced without affecting economic growth while at the same time implicitly may lead to poverty reduction. The findings substantiate the fact that a) energy usage has become more efficient in recent times, as well as indicate that b) fluctuations in energy consumption did not have a significant impact on economic output.

Since their discovery in the 1950's by Erdos and Renyi, network theory (the study of objects and their associations) has blossomed into a full-fledged branch of mathematics. Due to the network's flexibility, diverse scientific problems can be reformulated as networks and studied using a common set of tools. I define a network G = (V,E) composed of two parts: (i) the set of objects V, called nodes, and (ii) set of relationships (associations) E, called links, that connect objects in V. We can extend the classic network of nodes and links by describing the intensity of these associations with weights. More formally, weighted networks augment the classic network with a function f(e) from links to the real line, uncovering powerful ways to model real-world applications. This thesis studies new ways to construct robust micro powergrids, mine people's perceptions of causality on a social network, and proposes a new way to analyze crowdsourcing all in the context of the weighted network model. The current state of Earth's ecosystem and intensifying climate calls on scientists to find new ways to harvest clean affordable energy. A microgrid, or neighborhood-scale powergrid built using renewable energy sources attached to personal homes, suggest one way to ameliorate this energy crisis. We can study the stability (robustness) of such a small-scale system with weighted networks. A novel use of weighted networks and percolation theory guides the safe and efficient construction of power lines (links, E) connecting a small set of houses (nodes, V) to one another and weights each power line by the distance between houses. This new look at the robustness of microgrid structures calls into question the efficacy of the traditional utility. The next study uses the twitter social network to compare and contrast causal language from everyday conversation. Collecting a set of 1 million tweets, we find a set of words (unigrams), parts of speech, named entities, and sentiment signal the use of informal causal language. Breaking a problem difficult for a computer to solve into many parts and distributing these tasks to a group of humans to solve is called Crowdsourcing. My final project asks volunteers to 'reply' to questions asked of them and 'supply' novel questions for others to answer. I model this 'reply and supply' framework as a dynamic weighted network, proposing new theories about this network's behavior and how to steer it toward worthy goals. This thesis demonstrates novel uses of, enhances the current scientific literature on, and presents novel methodology for, weighted networks.

The output of the National economy of the Czech Republic is conditioned by a sum of important factors. There are sectors, which increased power during the last two decades, mainly due to expansion of modern technologies and knowledge workers. One of this is Construction. Construction is specific to its position in the economy and in particular is characterized by the greatest seasonality ever. However, this is not a problem for statistical analysis, rather a benefit. Modern approaches allow us to analyze seasonal fluctuations. From selected data we are able to construct evolutionary forecasts. The work will be performed for the most important indicators in the Czech Construction. The outcome of the paper will be conditional forecasts of these indicators. It will also make analyze of the relationship between these indicators and other variables that might affected it. The work is practical application of stochastic modeling approach by Box and Jenkins, augmented by more modern approaches, such as verification of Granger causality and co-integration and testing of seasonal unit roots by Hylleberg et al.

Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / Life expectancy in South African has been fluctuating following the global trends that affects both developed and developing countries. In South Africa the average life expectancy from 1994 to 1996 was higher with an average of 61,3 years. As from 1997 to 1999 it declined to an average of 58,4 years. The difference in years between 1994-1996 and 1997- 1999 was 2,9 years. From 2000-2002, life expectancy continued to decline to an average of 54,6 years. Life expectancy declined in a constant proportion from 2003-2005 and 2006-2008. In 2003-2005 it slightly declined to 52 years and in 2004-2007 it declined to 42,0 years. Life expectancy escalated after the mentioned years to 54,4 years between 2009-2011 and from 2012-2013 life expectancy was 54,0 years on average. This study examined factors or variables that verify the socioeconomic determinants of life expectancy in post-apartheid South Africa. Understanding the relationship between life expectancy and the socioeconomic variables was based on three objectives. The main objective for this study was to determine the impact of socioeconomic variables and health policy efforts on life expectancy, seeking an in-depth understanding by investigating the causality relationship between life expectancy and socioeconomic variables thus later investigating the difference between male and female’s life expectancy. This study was motivated by the fluctuating life expectancy in South Africa. The fluctuation in life expectancy were thus studied in relation to socioeconomic determinants which are government health expenditure, government education expenditure, GDP per capita, total fertility rate, urban population, access to sustainable drinking water and undernourishment. The mentioned variables were used as socioeconomic determinants of life expectancy during post-apartheid South Africa.

Les politiques de réduction des inégalités de santé basées sur une politique de redistribution en matière de revenu ou de réduction des coûts d’accès aux soins pour les plus démunis sont communes à de nombreux pays. Ces politiques sont basées sur le fait qu’il existe une relation entre revenu individuel et état de santé. Cette thèse analyse cette relation à partir de l’enquête ≪ Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe ≫ qui concerne des Européens âgés de 50 ans et plus. Nous montrons que le revenu individuel est associé de manière positive et concave à la santé (hypothèse de revenu absolu), mais aussi que les inégalités de revenu au sein d’un pays affectent tous les individus de ce pays (version forte de l’hypothèse de l’inégalité des revenus). Les mécanismes sous-jacents de cette hypothèse montrent que pour réduire les inégalités de santé liées aux inégalités de revenu, les gouvernements doivent promouvoir les investissements en capital humain et social. Aussi, les individus sont sensibles au mode de vie suivi par la majorité des personnes. Par la suite, nous implémentons une analyse simultanée de la santé et du revenu à l’aide d’un estimateur du maximum de vraisemblance à information complète. La causalité bidirectionnelle du revenu et de la santé est mise en avant, ainsi que la présence de caractéristiques individuelles inobservables communes à ces derniers. Enfin, sur un exemple concret, celui des politiques de lutte contre le tabagisme, cette thèse analyse simultanément la consommation de tabac, le revenu des individus, et l’aversion au risque. Les résultats mettent en avant l’importance des préférences individuelles dans la décision de fumer. En effet, les fumeurs Européens âgés de 50 ans et plus sont orientés vers le présent, de telles sorts qu’ils ne considèrent pas les effets néfastes du tabac sur la santé ; et sont, soit averse au risque du fait de l’anxiété, ou, aiment le risque puisqu’ils acceptent d’altérer leur santé. / In many countries, governments set public policies to reduce health inequalities, based on income redistribution or on reducing the costs associated to the access to care for the poorest individuals. These policies are based on the fact that there is a relationship between individual income and health status. This doctoral dissertation analyses the latter, using the survey ``Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe", which considers Europeans aged 50 and over. We first show that individual income is positively related with health in a concave way (Absolute Income Hypothesis). Results also suggest that income inequalities in a country affect all members in this society (strong version of the Income Inequality Hypothesis). Then, the underlying mechanisms of the latter hypothesis show that to reduce income-related health inequalities, governments should promote investments in human and social capital. Moreover, individuals are sensitive in following the common cultural model of the standard of living. Thereafter, we implement a simultaneous analysis of health and income using a Full Information Maximum Likelihood estimator. This allows to highlight two-way causality of income and health, as well as, the presence of unobserved individual characteristics common to both outcomes. Finally, on a concrete example, the one of public policies against smoking, this doctoral dissertation simultaneously investigates smoking, income, and risk aversion. Results highlight the importance of individual preferences in the smoking decision. Indeed, European smokers aged 50 and over are present-oriented, such that they do not consider the harmful effects of smoking on health; and are, either risk averse because of anxiety, or, risk lover when they agree to take the risk of altering their health.

Esta dissertação visa oferecer uma interpretação da verdade prática em Aristóteles que explique o papel causal da razão prática com relação à ação humana. Nossa hipótese é de que a verdade prática depende fundamentalmente da efetividade causal da razão prática na ação, visto que a razão prática, por sua relação com o desejo, consistiria em algo que é simultaneamente da verdade e da ação, de sorte que a verdade prática não seria uma verdade que apenas pode levar à ação, mas uma verdade que efetivamente leva à ação, ou melhor, ela seria verdade justamente por levar à ação. Para tanto, analisaremos o sentido em que a razão prática é causa de ação mostrando que a realização de seu a verdade está inequivocamente ligada ao desempenho dessa função causal, não podendo se reduzir ao fato de a razão prática descobrir ou se valer de proposições verdadeiras. / This dissertation aims at an interpretation of Aristotles account of practical truth which explains the causal role of practical reason with regards to human action. Our hypothesis is that practical truth depends fundamentally upon practical reasons causal efficacy in action, since practical reason, due to its relation with desire, would be something which is at the same time of truth and action, so that practical truth would not be a kind of truth which can only lead to action, but a kind of truth which elicts action, in other words, it would be truth precisely because it elicts action. In order to do that, we shall analyse the sense in which practical reason is a cause o action showing that the achievement of its the truth is unequivocally connected to the performance of this causal role, implying that practical truth is not reducible to the fact that practical reason discovers or makes use of true propositions.