Cette thèse étudie la dynamique du marché des credit default swaps (CDS), instruments financiers de transfert du risque du crédit, et de ses relations avec les autres marchés, en particulier durant les épisodes de crise. Le marché des CDS a connu un développement vigoureux depuis son émergence, au milieu des années 90. Les volumes de contrats de CDS échangés ont augmenté à un rythme rapide, ce marché a ainsi connu le développement le plus rapide parmi les dérivés négociés de gré-à-gré (over-the-counter – OTC). Les participants de marché, principalement les grandes banques, ont su tirer parti des possibilités offertes par les outils de transfert de risque qui leur ont permis tout d'abord, de disposer d'instruments novateurs de protection contre le risque de crédit, mais aussi d'assurer l'expansion de leur activité d'intermédiation du crédit tout en optimisant les exigences en capital. Bien que le fonctionnement du marché des CDS ait connu une amélioration depuis le début des années 2000, plusieurs éléments mettent en doute l'hypothèse d'un marché efficient et résilient aux périodes de crise. A travers cinq articles empiriques, cette thèse se penche sur deux épisodes de crises durant lesquels le fonctionnement de ce marché a pu être perturbé : d'une part la crise de mai 2005, provoquée par la dégradation en catégorie spéculative de deux entreprises américaines majeures, General Motors et Ford, par les principales agences de notation ; d'autre part la crise financière ayant débuté en 2007 et qui a évolué en crise de la dette souveraine dans le cas des Etats européens à partir de fin 2009. L'étude de ces deux phases de crise montre que le développement du marché des CDS a participé à modifier les relations entre marchés, les investisseurs ayant fait des primes de CDS une source d'information privilégiée pour évaluer le risque de crédit. En effet, les travaux empiriques menés tout au long de la thèse concluent que ce marché est devenu progressivement le lieu où tendait à se dérouler le processus de découverte des prix. Ces travaux mettent également en lumière les vulnérabilités du marché des CDS, renforcées par des effets de contagion déjà à l'œuvre lors de l'épisode de crise de 2005, et incitent à une meilleure régulation des outils de transfert du risque de crédit et, d'une manière plus générale, des dérivés OTC. / This thesis studies the dynamics of the market in credit default swaps (CDS), which are credit risk transfer instruments, and the relationships between the CDS market and other markets, particularly during crisis periods. The CDS market has seen a boom since its emergence, in the mid-90s, and volumes of CDS contracts have increased at a rapid pace. Its growth has thus been the strongest among over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. Market participants, mainly the major banks, have taken advantage of the opportunities created by credit transfer instruments, which have offered new ways to hedge against credit risk and also contributed to the expansion of their credit intermediation activity, while optimising capital requirements. Despite the improvement of the CDS market's functioning since the early 2000s, several facts call the assumption of an efficient market that is resilient to crisis periods into question. Through five empirical articles, this thesis focuses on two crisis periods which during which the functioning of this market was affected: first, the General Motors and Ford crisis in 2005 following the downgrading of the credit ratings of these two flagship companies to speculative grade; and second, the financial crisis of 2007-2009 which turned into a sovereign debt crisis in the case of European countries from end-2009 onwards. The study of these two crisis periods shows that the growth of the CDS market has contributed to a change in the relationships between markets, as investors tend to regard CDS premia as a prime source of information to assess credit risk. Indeed, the empirical research conducted throughout the thesis concludes that this has gradually become the place where the price discovery process tends to occur. This work highlights the vulnerabilities of the CDS market, reinforced by the contagion effects at work during the 2005 crisis episode, and points to the need for better regulation of credit risk transfer instruments and, more broadly, of OTC derivatives.

Cette thèse a pour objet de revisiter, à la lumière de données financières historiques inédites, certains résultats de la littérature en histoire économique concernant la propagation de la Grande Dépression vers l’Europe, et plus particulièrement vers la France. Nous cherchons notamment à étudier les différents canaux de transmission à l’échelle internationale -boursiers, bancaires et monétaires- de cette crise et évaluons le rôle respectif qu’ils ont pu exercer dans la propagation de cette crise aux marchés financiers français. Les différentes contributions, que nous proposons dans cette thèse, sont avant tout empiriques et s’appuient sur un travail important effectué en amont de collecte et de traitement de données financières originales, provenant principalement des archives de la Bourse de Paris.Plusieurs résultats importants émergent de notre travail. Notre analyse sur les marchés boursiers montre, tout d’abord, que le krach boursier américain de 1929 a eu un faible impact sur la bourse de Paris, De même, le système bancaire français a, dans son ensemble, plutôt bien résisté à la crise bancaire du début des années 1930, en raison notamment de la forte spécialisation qui le caractérisait à cette époque. Enfin, nous montrons que le niveau d’intégration financière entre les États-Unis, la France et la Belgique, à travers l’étude des relations bilatérales entre les marchés actions de ces trois pays, a eu tendance à se renforcer avec l’adoption par ces pays du système de l’étalon "de change" or. Cette forte intégration financière, couplée aux contraintes en matière de politique économique liées à ce système monétaire, pourraient ainsi expliquer comment la Grande Dépression s’est propagée en Europe et pourquoi la crise économique s’est prolongée dans des pays comme la France ou la Belgique, comparativement à d’autres grandes économies. / The aim of this thesis is to shed new light on how the Great Depression spread to Europe, and more particularly to France by relying on new historical financial data compiled from original source documents. In particular, we analyze the different transmission channels - stock markets, banking sector and international monetary system - of this crisis, in order to assess the respective role they have played in the impact of this crisis on French financial markets. We contribute empirically to this larger literature by providing evidence based on original historical data hand-collected from the archives of the Paris Stock Exchange.Several important results emerge from our work. Our analysis based on the stock markets shows, first, that the American stock market crash of 1929 had a low impact on the Paris stock exchange. Similarly, the French banking system, as a whole, remained quite resilient to the banking crisis of the beginning of the 1930s, mainly due to its strong specialization of the sector at that time. Finally, we show that the level of financial integration between the United States, France and Belgium - proxied by bilateral relationships between their equity markets - has tended to increase with the adoption by these countries of the Gold Exchange Standard. This high financial integration, coupled with economic policies constrained by the exchange rate regime, could explain how the Great Depression spread to Europe and why the economic crisis lasted longer in countries such as France or Belgium, compared to other major economies

Cette thèse s’intéresse à la stabilité financière. Nous considérons plusieurs modèles économétriques visant à offrir une meilleure compréhension des perturbations pouvant affecter les systèmes bancaires et financiers. L’objectif ici est de doter les institutions publiques et réglementaires d’un éventail plus large d’instruments de surveillance. Dans le premier chapitre, nous appliquons un modèle logit visant à identifier les principaux déterminants des crises financières. En plus des variables explicatives traditionnelles suggérées par la littérature, nous considérons une mesure des coûts de transactions (l’écart acheteur-vendeur) sur les marchés financiers. Nos estimations indiquent que des coûts de transactions élevés sont généralement associés à des risques accrus de crises financières. Dans un contexte où l’instauration d’une taxe sur les transactions financières (TTF) ferait augmenter les coûts de transactions, nos résultats suggèrent que l’instauration d’une telle taxe pourrait accroître les probabilités de crises financières. Dans le second chapitre, nous analysons la formation des risques financiers dans un contexte où le nombre de données disponibles est de plus en plus élevé. Nous construisons des prédicteurs de faillites bancaires à partir d’un grand ensemble de variables macro-financières que nous incorporons dans un modèle à variable discrète. Nous établissons un lien robuste et significatif entre les variables issues du secteur immobilier et les faillites bancaires. Le troisième chapitre met l’emphase sur la prévision des créances bancaires en souffrance (nonperforming loans). Nous analysons plusieurs modèles proposés par la littérature et évaluons leur performance prédictive lorsque nous remplaçons les variables explicatives usuelles par des prédicteurs sectoriels construits à partir d’une grande base de données. Nous trouvons que les modèles basés sur ces composantes latentes prévoient les créances en souffrance mieux que les modèles traditionnels, et que le secteur immobilier joue à nouveau un rôle important. / The primary focus of this thesis is on financial stability. More specifically, we investigate different issues related to the monitoring and forecasting of important underlying systemic financial vulnerabilities. We develop various econometric models aimed at providing a better assessment and early insights about the build-up of financial imbalances. Throughout this work, we consider complementary measures of financial (in)stability endowing hence the regulatory authorities with a deeper toolkit for achieving and maintaining financial stability. In the first Chapter, we apply a logit model to identify important determinants of financial crises. Alongwiththetraditionalexplanatoryvariablessuggestedintheliterat ure, weconsider a measure of bid-ask spreads in the financial markets of each country as a proxy for the likely effect of a Securities Transaction Tax (STT) on transaction costs. One key contribution of this Chapter is to study the impact that a harmonized, area- wide tax, often referred to as Tobin Tax would have on the stability of financial markets. Our results confirm important findingsuncoveredintheliterature, butalsoindicatethathighertransactioncostsaregenerally associated with a higher risk of crisis. We document the robustness of this key result to possible endogeneity effects and to the 2008−2009 global crisis episode. To the extent that a widely-based STT would increase transaction costs, our results therefore suggest that the establishment of this tax could increase the risk of financial crises. In the second Chapter, we assess the build-up of financial imbalances in a data-rich environment. Concretely, we concentrate on one key dimension of a sound financial system by monitoring and forecasting the monthly aggregate commercial bank failures in the United States. We extract key sectoral predictors from a large set of macro-financial variables and incorporate them in a hurdle negative binomial model to predict the number of monthly commercial bank failures. We find a strong and robust relationship between the housing industry and bank failures. This evidence suggests that housing industry plays a key role in the buildup of vulnerability in the banking sector. Different specifications of our model confirm the robustness of our results. In the third Chapter, we focus on the modeling of non-performing loans (NPLs), one other dimension along with, financial vulnerabilities are scrutinized. We apply different models proposed in the recent literature for fitting and forecasting U.S. banks non-performing loans (NPLs). We compare the performance of these models to those of similar models in which we replace traditional explanatory variables by key sectoral predictors all extracted from the large set of potential U.S. macro-financial variables. We uncover that the latent-componentbased models all outperform the traditional models, suggesting then that practitioners and researchers could consider latent factors in their modeling of NPLs. Moreover, we also confirm that the housing sector greatly impacts the evolution of non-performing loans over time.

La réalisation et le maintien de la crédibilité de la politique monétaire, évaluée par l'écart entre les résultats et les annonces officielles de politique (Gilles [1992]), est devenue une tâche cruciale pour l'Autorité monétaire, lorsque, à partir des années 1980, il a été abordée, dans la littérature économique, la question du central banking (Gilles & Bastidon [2014], Ferguson et Schularick [2008]). Bien que les avantages de la crédibilité soient évidents, ses déterminants le sont moins. En effet, les dernières décennies sont marquées par de profondes mutations dans la gouvernance des Banques Centrales. En particulier, la délégation de la politique monétaire à une Banque Centrale indépendante vis-à-vis des pouvoirs publics est devenue un des principaux déterminants de la crédibilité dans les économies avancées (Goodfriend [2012]; Bordo & Orphanides [2013]; Persson & Tabellini, [1993]). Cependant, pour les Pays en développement, en revanche, le débat sur la nécessité et la faisabilité des mécanismes d'engagement n’est pas tranché, eu égards des caractéristiques spécifiques (Kugman & al [1992], Assoumou-Ella & Bastidon [2015]). En utilisant un modèle simple et une fonction de perte de la banque centrale similaire à celles de Ball [1999] ou Cavoli [2008], nous comparons deux régimes de change différents afin de déterminer lequel des cas est le plus susceptible d'inciter les gouvernements à intensifier la lutte contre la corruption, tout en maintenant l’objectif de stabilité des prix. Un régime d’ancrage crédible conduit à une taxation élevée et un faible niveau de corruption et d’inflation, mais également à un niveau de croissance faible. Un régime monétaire indépendant sans ancrage, en revanche, conduit généralement à un niveau de corruption plus élevée. Cependant, lorsque l’indépendance de la banque centrale est assez forte, le régime monétaire indépendant sans ancrage peut également conduire à moins de corruption, plus de production et de dépenses publiques, bien qu’avec une inflation plus élevée qu’un régime monétaire avec ancrage. Ces résultats semblent indiquer que dans le cas des Pays en développement, l’indépendance de la banque centrale associée à l’ancrage du taux de change ne serait ni une condition nécessaire, ni une condition suffisante à la stabilité des prix. / Achieving and maintaining the credibility of monetary policy, measured by the gap between outcomes and official announcements of policy (Gilles [1992]), has become a crucial task for the Monetary Authority when, from the 1980s, was tackled in the economic literature, the issue of central banking (Bastidon & Gilles [2014]). Indeed, the delegation of monetary policy to an independent central bank vis-à-vis the public authority has become a main determinant of credibility in advanced economies (Cukierman [1992], Bordo & Orphanides [2013]). However, its relevance for developing countries due to their specific characteristics (Kugman & al [1992], Assoumou-Ella & Bastidon [2015]) is far from being settled. Using a simple model and a loss of function of the central bank similar to those of Ball [1999] or Cavoli [2008], we compare two different exchange rate regimes to determine which cases are most likely to encourage governments to intensify the fight against corruption, while maintaining the objective of price stability. A credible anchor regime leads to high taxation and low levels of corruption and inflation, but at a low level of growth. An independent monetary regime unanchored, however, usually leads to a higher level of corruption. However, when the independence of the central bank is strong enough, the independent monetary regime unanchored can also lead to less corruption, more production and spending, although with higher inflation a monetary regime with anchor. These results suggest that in the case of developing countries, the independence of the central bank associated with pegged exchange rates would be neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for price stability.

Dans le cadre de l’analyse des crises financières au sein des pays émergents, de nombreux travaux sont venus expliquer l’occurrence de ce genre de phénomènes. Pourtant, des faits nouveaux se manifestent sans pour autant s’inscrire dans les recherches déjà proposées (Brésil, Corée du Sud et pays d’Europe centrale et orientale principalement). En référence à cette littérature, la thèse pose en retour la question de l’incidence de la contagion financière sur la dégradation des fondamentaux macroéconomiques et macro-financiers de pays émergents susceptibles d’être initialement considérés comme « robustes ». La réponse passe par la mise en évidence des principales composantes des crises financières pour en extraire les limites face à l’hypothèse soulevée. La description des stratégies de rattrapage économique, par l’intégration au marché financier international, est à l’origine des vulnérabilités potentielles dans les effets de contagion. La structure instable de l’endettement international, à l’aide de l’Hypothèse d’Instabilité Financière de Minsky (1974), va offrir les éléments théoriques nécessaires à la modélisation des faits empiriques. Les premières générations de crises de change viendront conceptualiser la fuite des capitaux en attribuant la responsabilité de la contraction de la liquidité au reste du monde. Dans la transition qu’ils opèrent actuellement en vue de leur adhésion à l’UEM, les PECO ne peuvent être considérés comme étant à l’abri de la survenance de crises financières, et ce même s’ils bénéficient des impacts stabilisateurs favorables liés à leur appartenance à l’UE. Mais disposent-ils alors des facteurs de robustesse macroéconomique et macro-financière s / As part of the analysis of financial crises in emerging countries, many studies have come to explain the occurrence of such phenomena. However, developments occur without enrolling in research already available (Brazil, South Korea and countries in Central and Eastern Europe mainly). In reference to this literature, the thesis in turn raises the question of the impact of financial contagion on the degradation of macro-economic fundamentals and emerging countries' financial might initially be regarded as "robust." The answer lies in the identification of key components of financial crises to extract the limits against the hypothesis raised. The description of the strategies of economic recovery, by the international financial market integration, is the source of potential vulnerabilities in the contagion. The unstable structure of international debt, with the financial instability hypothesis of Minsky (1974), will provide the theoretical elements necessary for modeling of empirical facts. The first generation of currency crises will conceptualize capital flight by assigning responsibility for the liquidity squeeze in the world. In the transition they currently operate with a view to joining EMU, the Central and Eastern Europe countries cannot be considered safe from the occurrence of financial crises, even if they have favorable impacts associated with stabilizers membership in the EU. But then they have robust macroeconomic factors and macro-financial enough to ward off the economic impact of any pressure by contagion? The empirical part of the thesis should answer the question through analytical and econometric modeling

Les articles constitutifs de cette thèse analysent les défaillances des marchés financiers traditionnellement identifiées par les économistes (associées aux externalités, aux asymétries d'information et à l'incomplétude des marchés) et les réponses des pouvoirs publics. Une observation centrale est que les interventions publiques ne résultent presque jamais d'une analyse à froid de ces défaillances de marché, mais se décident dans l'urgence pour répondre aux dysfonctionnements les plus évidents observés lors d'une crise. Cette approche pragmatique et a-théorique conduit à des interventions mal calibrées. Ces articles s'attaquent notamment à la politique du prêteur en dernier ressort qui encourage l'endettement à court terme des institutions financières, et nourrit le risque systémique. Ils soulignent également les risques de certaines réformes décidées à la suite de la crise des « subprime ». Les pouvoirs publics devraient se concentrer sur la fourniture des biens publics clairement identifiés par l'analyse économique (contrôle des « agents » et information), et ne pas multiplier les interventions hasardeuses qui créent parfois plus d'imperfections de marché qu'elles ne prétendent en résoudre. / The constituent articles of this dissertation analyze the financial market failures traditionally identified by economists (associated with externalities, information asymmetries and incompleteness of markets) and the policy responses. A central observation is that public interventions have almost never resulted from a cold analysis of these market failures but are decided in a hurry to respond to the most obvious shortcomings observed during a crisis. This pragmatic and a-theoretical approach leads to poorly calibrated interventions. These articles are addressing in particular the lender of last resort policy that encourages the issuance of various short-term debts by financial institutions and feeds systemic risk. They also highlight the risks of certain reforms decided after the "subprime" crisis. Governments should focus on the provision of public goods clearly identified by economic analysis (control of "agents" and information), and should not multiply risky interventions that sometimes create more market imperfections than they claim to solve.

A partir d’une analyse du défaut des banques et de la régulation au travers des notations de crédits (et des agences de notation), des modèles portant sur les CDS, de Bâle III et du capital insurance, nous trouvons que les spécificités des CDS en font un bon candidat pour prévoir (et idéalement empêcher) les défauts potentiels des banques. En effet, grâce aux propriétés (financières et économiques) des CDS, ainsi qu’aux résultats d’études empiriques, nous montrons qu’ils reflètent correctement le comportement des risques des banques et qu’ils ont capté les changements informationnels plus rapidement que les notations de crédits qui sont restées relativement constantes durant 2007 et 2008.Ainsi, en utilisant un déclencheur ad hoc basé sur les CDS et l’action appropriée si le déclencheur venait à s’activer, nous pourrions empêcher le défaut d’une banque. Et la compréhension du mécanisme afférent au capital contingent est d’un grand intérêt pour atteindre cet objectif qui optimise le monitoring mis en oeuvre par les banques et les régulateurs. / Based on an analysis of the default of the banks and regulation through credit ratings (and rating agencies), CDS models, Basel III, bail-In and capital insurance, we find that the characteristics of CDS make them a good candidate to forecast (and ideally prevent) the potential defaults of the banks. Indeed, thanks to the economics of CDS and results of empirical studies, we show that they are a good proxy of bank risks and that they did capture information changes more quickly than the credit ratings which remained relatively constant during 2007 and 2008.So, using a specific trigger based on CDS and the appropriate action, should the trigger be activated, we could prevent the default of a bank. And the understanding of contingent capital mechanism is of great interest to reach this objective which optimizes the monitoring implemented by banks as well as regulators.

The active use of macroeconomic policies to smooth economic fluctuations and, as a<p>consequence, the stance that policymakers should adopt over the business cycle, remain<p>controversial issues in the economic literature.<p>In the light of the dramatic experience of the early 1930s’ Great Depression, Keynes (1936)<p>argued that the market mechanism could not be relied upon to spontaneously recover from<p>a slump, and advocated counter-cyclical public spending and monetary policy to stimulate<p>demand. Albeit the Keynesian doctrine had largely influenced policymaking during<p>the two decades following World War II, it began to be seriously challenged in several<p>directions since the start of the 1970s. The introduction of rational expectations within<p>macroeconomic models implied that aggregate demand management could not stabilize<p>the economy’s responses to shocks (see in particular Sargent and Wallace (1975)). According<p>to this view, in fact, rational agents foresee the effects of the implemented policies, and<p>wage and price expectations are revised upwards accordingly. Therefore, real wages and<p>money balances remain constant and so does output. Within such a conceptual framework,<p>only unexpected policy interventions would have some short-run effects upon the economy.<p>The "real business cycle (RBC) theory", pioneered by Kydland and Prescott (1982), offered<p>an alternative explanation on the nature of fluctuations in economic activity, viewed<p>as reflecting the efficient responses of optimizing agents to exogenous sources of fluctuations, outside the direct control of policymakers. The normative implication was that<p>there should be no role for economic policy activism: fiscal and monetary policy should be<p>acyclical. The latest generation of New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium<p>(DSGE) models builds on rigorous foundations in intertemporal optimizing behavior by<p>consumers and firms inherited from the RBC literature, but incorporates some frictions<p>in the adjustment of nominal and real quantities in response to macroeconomic shocks<p>(see Woodford (2003)). In such a framework, not only policy "surprises" may have an<p>impact on the economic activity, but also the way policymakers "systematically" respond<p>to exogenous sources of fluctuation plays a fundamental role in affecting the economic<p>activity, thereby rekindling interest in the use of counter-cyclical stabilization policies to<p>fine tune the business cycle.<p>Yet, despite impressive advances in the economic theory and econometric techniques, there are no definitive answers on the systematic stance policymakers should follow, and on the<p>effects of macroeconomic policies upon the economy. Against this background, the present thesis attempts to inspect the interrelations between macroeconomic policies and the economic activity from novel angles. Three contributions<p>are proposed. <p><p>In the first Chapter, I show that relying on the information actually available to policymakers when budgetary decisions are taken is of fundamental importance for the assessment of the cyclical stance of governments. In the second, I explore whether the effectiveness of fiscal shocks in spurring the economic activity has declined since the beginning of the 1970s. In the third, the impact of systematic monetary policies over U.S. industrial sectors is investigated. In the existing literature, empirical assessments of the historical stance of policymakers over the economic cycle have been mainly drawn from the estimation of "reduced-form" policy reaction functions (see in particular Taylor (1993) and Galì and Perotti (2003)). Such rules typically relate a policy instrument (a reference short-term interest rate or an indicator of discretionary fiscal policy) to a set of explanatory variables (notably inflation, the output gap and the debt-GDP ratio, as long as fiscal policy is concerned). Although these policy rules can be seen as simple approximations of what derived from an explicit optimization problem solved by social planners (see Kollmann (2007)), they received considerable attention since they proved to track the behavior of central banks and fiscal<p>policymakers relatively well. Typically, revised data, i.e. observations available to the<p>econometrician when the study is carried out, are used in the estimation of such policy<p>reaction functions. However, data available in "real-time" to policymakers may end up<p>to be remarkably different from what it is observed ex-post. Orphanides (2001), in an<p>innovative and thought-provoking paper on the U.S. monetary policy, challenged the way<p>policy evaluation was conducted that far by showing that unrealistic assumptions about<p>the timeliness of data availability may yield misleading descriptions of historical policy.<p>In the spirit of Orphanides (2001), in the first Chapter of this thesis I reconsider how<p>the intentional cyclical stance of fiscal authorities should be assessed. Importantly, in<p>the framework of fiscal policy rules, not only variables such as potential output and the<p>output gap are subject to measurement errors, but also the main discretionary "operating<p>instrument" in the hands of governments: the structural budget balance, i.e. the headline<p>government balance net of the effects due to automatic stabilizers. In fact, the actual<p>realization of planned fiscal measures may depend on several factors (such as the growth<p>rate of GDP, the implementation lags that often follow the adoption of many policy<p>measures, and others more) outside the direct and full control of fiscal authorities. Hence,<p>there might be sizeable differences between discretionary fiscal measures as planned in the<p>past and what it is observed ex-post. To be noted, this does not apply to monetary policy<p>since central bankers can control their operating interest rates with great accuracy.<p>When the historical behavior of fiscal authorities is analyzed from a real-time perspective, it emerges that the intentional stance has been counter-cyclical, especially during expansions, in the main OECD countries throughout the last thirteen years. This is at<p>odds with findings based on revised data, generally pointing to pro-cyclicality (see for example Gavin and Perotti (1997)). It is shown that empirical correlations among revision<p>errors and other second-order moments allow to predict the size and the sign of the bias<p>incurred in estimating the intentional stance of the policy when revised data are (mistakenly)<p>used. It addition, formal tests, based on a refinement of Hansen (1999), do not reject<p>the hypothesis that the intentional reaction of fiscal policy to the cycle is characterized by<p>two regimes: one counter-cyclical, when output is above its potential level, and the other<p>acyclical, in the opposite case. On the contrary, the use of revised data does not allow to identify any threshold effect.<p><p>The second and third Chapters of this thesis are devoted to the exploration of the impact<p>of fiscal and monetary policies upon the economy.<p>Over the last years, two approaches have been mainly followed by practitioners for the<p>estimation of the effects of macroeconomic policies on the real activity. On the one hand,<p>calibrated and estimated DSGE models allow to trace out the economy’s responses to<p>policy disturbances within an analytical framework derived from solid microeconomic<p>foundations. On the other, vector autoregressive (VAR) models continue to be largely<p>used since they have proved to fit macro data particularly well, albeit they cannot fully<p>serve to inspect structural interrelations among economic variables.<p>Yet, the typical DSGE and VAR models are designed to handle a limited number of variables<p>and are not suitable to address economic questions potentially involving a large<p>amount of information. In a DSGE framework, in fact, identifying aggregate shocks and<p>their propagation mechanism under a plausible set of theoretical restrictions becomes a<p>thorny issue when many variables are considered. As for VARs, estimation problems may<p>arise when models are specified in a large number of indicators (although latest contributions suggest that large-scale Bayesian VARs perform surprisingly well in forecasting.<p>See in particular Banbura, Giannone and Reichlin (2007)). As a consequence, the growing<p>popularity of factor models as effective econometric tools allowing to summarize in<p>a parsimonious and flexible manner large amounts of information may be explained not<p>only by their usefulness in deriving business cycle indicators and forecasting (see for example<p>Reichlin (2002) and D’Agostino and Giannone (2006)), but also, due to recent<p>developments, by their ability in evaluating the response of economic systems to identified<p>structural shocks (see Giannone, Reichlin and Sala (2002) and Forni, Giannone, Lippi<p>and Reichlin (2007)). Parallelly, some attempts have been made to combine the rigor of<p>DSGE models and the tractability of VAR ones, with the advantages of factor analysis<p>(see Boivin and Giannoni (2006) and Bernanke, Boivin and Eliasz (2005)).<p><p>The second Chapter of this thesis, based on a joint work with Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, presents an original study combining factor and VAR analysis in an encompassing framework,<p>to investigate how "unexpected" and "unsystematic" variations in taxes and government<p>spending feed through the economy in the home country and abroad. The domestic<p>impact of fiscal shocks in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. and cross-border fiscal spillovers<p>from Germany to seven European economies is analyzed. In addition, the time evolution of domestic and cross-border tax and spending multipliers is explored. In fact, the way fiscal policy impacts on domestic and foreign economies<p>depends on several factors, possibly changing over time. In particular, the presence of excess<p>capacity, accommodating monetary policy, distortionary taxation and liquidity constrained<p>consumers, plays a prominent role in affecting how fiscal policies stimulate the<p>economic activity in the home country. The impact on foreign output crucially depends<p>on the importance of trade links, on real exchange rates and, in a monetary union, on<p>the sensitiveness of foreign economies to the common interest rate. It is well documented<p>that the last thirty years have witnessed frequent changes in the economic environment.<p>For instance, in most OECD countries, the monetary policy stance became less accommodating<p>in the 1980s compared to the 1970s, and more accommodating again in the<p>late 1990s and early 2000s. Moreover, financial markets have been heavily deregulated.<p>Hence, fiscal policy might have lost (or gained) power as a stimulating tool in the hands<p>of policymakers. Importantly, the issue of cross-border transmission of fiscal policy decisions is of the utmost relevance in the framework of the European Monetary Union and this explains why the debate on fiscal policy coordination has received so much attention since the adoption<p>of the single currency (see Ahearne, Sapir and Véron (2006) and European Commission<p>(2006)). It is found that over the period 1971 to 2004 tax shocks have generally been more effective in spurring domestic output than government spending shocks. Interestingly, the inclusion of common factors representing global economic phenomena yields to smaller multipliers<p>reconciling, at least for the U.K. the evidence from large-scale macroeconomic models,<p>generally finding feeble multipliers (see e.g. European Commission’s QUEST model), with<p>the one from a prototypical structural VAR pointing to stronger effects of fiscal policy.<p>When the estimation is performed recursively over samples of seventeen years of data, it<p>emerges that GDP multipliers have dropped drastically from early 1990s on, especially<p>in Germany (tax shocks) and in the U.S. (both tax and government spending shocks).<p>Moreover, the conduct of fiscal policy seems to have become less erratic, as documented<p>by a lower variance of fiscal shocks over time, and this might contribute to explain why<p>business cycles have shown less volatility in the countries under examination.<p>Expansionary fiscal policies in Germany do not generally have beggar-thy-neighbor effects<p>on other European countries. In particular, our results suggest that tax multipliers have<p>been positive but vanishing for neighboring countries (France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria), weak and mostly not significant for more remote ones (the U.K.<p>and Spain). Cross-border government spending multipliers are found to be monotonically<p>weak for all the subsamples considered.<p>Overall these findings suggest that fiscal "surprises", in the form of unexpected reductions in taxation and expansions in government consumption and investment, have become progressively less successful in stimulating the economic activity at the domestic level, indicating that, in the framework of the European Monetary Union, policymakers can only marginally rely on this discretionary instrument as a substitute for national monetary policies. <p><p>The objective of the third chapter is to inspect the role of monetary policy in the U.S. business cycle. In particular, the effects of "systematic" monetary policies upon several industrial sectors is investigated. The focus is on the systematic, or endogenous, component of monetary policy (i.e. the one which is related to the economic activity in a stable and predictable way), for three main reasons. First, endogenous monetary policies are likely to have sizeable real effects, if agents’ expectations are not perfectly rational and if there are some nominal and real frictions in a market. Second, as widely documented, the variability of the monetary instrument and of the main macro variables is only marginally explained by monetary "shocks", defined as unexpected and exogenous variations in monetary conditions. Third, monetary shocks can be simply interpreted as measurement errors (see Christiano, Eichenbaum<p>and Evans (1998)). Hence, the systematic component of monetary policy is likely to have played a fundamental role in affecting business cycle fluctuations. The strategy to isolate the impact of systematic policies relies on a counterfactual experiment, within a (calibrated or estimated) macroeconomic model. As a first step, a macroeconomic shock to which monetary policy is likely to respond should be selected,<p>and its effects upon the economy simulated. Then, the impact of such shock should be<p>evaluated under a “policy-inactive” scenario, assuming that the central bank does not respond<p>to it. Finally, by comparing the responses of the variables of interest under these<p>two scenarios, some evidence on the sensitivity of the economic system to the endogenous<p>component of the policy can be drawn (see Bernanke, Gertler and Watson (1997)).<p>Such kind of exercise is first proposed within a stylized DSGE model, where the analytical<p>solution of the model can be derived. However, as argued, large-scale multi-sector DSGE<p>models can be solved only numerically, thus implying that the proposed experiment cannot<p>be carried out. Moreover, the estimation of DSGE models becomes a thorny issue when many variables are incorporated (see Canova and Sala (2007)). For these arguments, a less “structural”, but more tractable, approach is followed, where a minimal amount of<p>identifying restrictions is imposed. In particular, a factor model econometric approach<p>is adopted (see in particular Giannone, Reichlin and Sala (2002) and Forni, Giannone,<p>Lippi and Reichlin (2007)). In this framework, I develop a technique to perform the counterfactual experiment needed to assess the impact of systematic monetary policies.<p>It is found that 2 and 3-digit SIC U.S. industries are characterized by very heterogeneous degrees of sensitivity to the endogenous component of the policy. Notably, the industries showing the strongest sensitivities are the ones producing durable goods and metallic<p>materials. Non-durable good producers, food, textile and lumber producing industries are<p>the least affected. In addition, it is highlighted that industrial sectors adjusting prices relatively infrequently are the most "vulnerable" ones. In fact, firms in this group are likely to increase quantities, rather than prices, following a shock positively hitting the economy. Finally, it emerges that sectors characterized by a higher recourse to external sources to finance investments, and sectors investing relatively more in new plants and machineries, are the most affected by endogenous monetary actions. / Doctorat en sciences économiques, Orientation économie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Les crises financières et les problèmes se formaient mais les indicateurs ne sont pas précis pour permettre une intervention réglementaire. La thèse propose un modèle dynamique pour le système bancaire avec une banque centrale afin de calculer un indicateur de faillite en fonction de la probabilité qu'une banque soit en faillite et les pertes rencontrées dans le réseau financier, une méthodologie qui peut améliorer la mesure, le suivi et la gestion du risque systémique.La thèse propose également des mécanismes de compensation : 1- avec un modèle considérant l'ancienneté du passif et avec un type d'actif liquide dont la vente excessive conduit à un impact sur le marché, 2 - avec un modèle considérant les participations croisées entres les banques dont les engagements interbancaires sont de différentes séniorités et avec un type d'actif liquide dont la vente excessive conduit à un impact sur le marché. / Financial crisis pose important theoretical problems on creating reliable indicator of stability of financial systems on which basis the regulators could intervene. The thesis proposes a dynamic model of banking system were the central bank can calculate an indicator of potential defaults taking into consideration the probability for a bank to default and the losses encountered in the financial network, a methodology that can improve the measurement, monitoring, and the management of the systemic risk. The thesis also suggests a clearing mechanisms : 1- in a model with seniority of liabilities and one type of liquid asset whose fire sale has a market impact, 2 - in a model with crossholdings among the banks whose interbank liabilities may be senior and junior and with one liquid asset whose firing sale has a market impact.