As the world becomes more globalized, multinational corporations (MNCs) are obliged to spread and open subsidiaries in foreign countries. Unfortunately, some countries have unstable political systems that exist in a state of systematic crisis. For corporations whose subsidiaries are caught in the middle of a political crisis in foreign territories, this unrest presents high physical and economic risks. Thus, what types of threats do firms encounter, and how do they perceive them? Can their experience influence their perception of the crisis? The focus of this dissertation is to study the decision-making process of multinational corporations in times of political and economic crisis at a subsidiary level, utilizing the example of Mozambique. Two studies were conducted. The first was drawn on prior literature on threat perception, social embeddedness and MNCs’ reaction to external threats. A conceptual model of MNCs’ response to political crises in frontier markets was developed. The antecedents or predictors of exit included influences on exit decision, past experiences, crisis perceptions and the moderator effect of social embeddedness between perception and exit. The second study focused on MNCs that not only decided to stay in the foreign market, but seek for unique opportunities in an economic crisis. The conceptual model created is simple, and builds upon existing literature on social embeddedness, MNCs’ experience, and international staffing. Within the international staffing literature, it provides a strong contribution to the theories on parent country nationals and host country nationals, implementing new constructs such as parent company experience and subsidiary company experience. Both models were tested using a survey data from managers of 108 MNCs’ subsidiaries in Mozambique, some of which exited due to the economic and political crisis, and some of which remained. The results indicate that both models are mostly supported. These studies contribute to the literature involving MNCs in host countries, including threat perception, social embeddedness, local content, international staffing, expatriates and past experiences. In practical terms, they provide a tool for both policymakers and private MNCs to act preemptively in times of political and/or economic crisis. / Business Administration/International Business Administration

This dissertation is concerned with international financial crisis response and the role that formal and informal international institutions play in this process. It is about understanding the potential of and limits to international crisis governance. It tries to answer three interrelated questions. First, what are the mechanics of international crisis lending? Second, what role can international institutions play in effectively distributing information so that policy responses can be optimized? Finally, what crisis governance structures are best suited to economic and political circumstances of the global financial system? In order to address these questions this dissertation uses a combination of formal (game theory) and informal theory building. It then examines these theoretical arguments using an empirical analysis based on historical survey of crisis response since the late nineteenth century and a comparative case study of crisis management during the Great Depression (1930-31) and the Asian Financial Crisis (1997-98). With regard to the first question, it argues that crisis lending is not simply shaped by the interaction of crisis lenders and borrowers. Ultimately, the terms of a crisis loan are negotiated in a space whose limits are determined by two additional actors: international investors/speculators and domestic political opposition. With regard to the second, it argues that both formal and informal international institutions play an important role in disseminating information and thus policy adaptation and change. However, there are clear limits to what institutions can do. In practice, this means that the goal of creating a crisis-free system is impossible. Finally, with regard to the broad question of crisis governance, it argues that the most effective financial governance system is one build around a partnership between a concert of key financial powers and an international financial institution dedicated to maintaining stability in the financial system.

L’objectif de cette thèse est la mise en place d’un Système d’Alerte Précoce comme instrument de prévision de la survenance des crises bancaires et des crises de la dette souveraine dans 48 pays de 1977 à 2010. Il s’agit à la fois d’identifier les facteurs capables de prédire ces événements et ceux annonçant leurs interactions éventuelles. La présente étude propose une approche à la fois originale et robuste qui tient compte de l’incertitude des modèles et des paramètres par la méthode de combinaison bayésienne des modèles de régression ou Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA). Nos résultats montrent que les avoirs étrangers nets en pourcentage du total des actifs, la dette à court terme en pourcentage des réserves totales et enfin la dette publique en pourcentage du PIB ont un pouvoir prédictif élevé pour expliquer les crises de la dette souveraine pour plusieurs pays. De plus, la croissance de l’activité et du crédit bancaire, le degré de libéralisation financière et le poids de la dette extérieure sont des signaux décisifs des crises bancaires. Notre approche offre le meilleur compromis entre les épisodes manqués et les fausses alertes. Enfin, nous étudions le lien entre les crises bancaires et les crises de la dette souveraine pour 62 pays de 1970 à 2011, en développant une approche basée sur un modèle Vecteur Auto-Régressif (VAR). Nos estimations montrent une relation significative et bidirectionnelle entre les deux types d’évènements. / The main purpose of this thesis is the development of an Early Warning System to predict banking and sovereign debt crises in 48 countries from 1977 to 2010. We are interested in identifying both factors that predict these events and those announcing their possible interactions. In particular, our empirical works provide an original and robust approach accounting for model and parameter uncertainty by means of the Bayesian Model Averaging method. Our results show that: Net foreign assets to total assets, short term debt to total reserves, and public debt to GDP have a high predictive power to signal sovereign debt crises in many countries. Furthermore, the growth rates of economic activity and credit, financial liberalization, and the external indebtedness are decisive signals of banking crises. Our approach offers the best compromise between missed episodes and false alarms. Finally, we study the link between banking and sovereign debt crises for 62 countries from 1970 to 2011 by developing an approach based on a Vector Autoregressive model (VAR). Our estimates show a significant two-way relationship between the two types of events.

Les marchés financiers sont souvent sujets à d’importantes perturbations, les plus récentes ayant été observées lors de la crise financière de 2008. Ces perturbations peuvent être qualifiées de stress financier, qui se définit comme une interruption du fonctionnement normal des marchés financiers. Ce mémoire propose de mesurer le stress du marché financier canadien, en s’inspirant de l’analyse effectuée par KLIESEN et SMITH [2010] pour les États-Unis. Ces auteurs, qui travaillent à la Réserve fédérale de Saint-Louis, proposent une approche basée sur une analyse en composante principale. Nos résultats montrent que le stress sur les marchés canadiens a une évolution similaire à celui des États-Unis. Un test de causalité de Granger indique que le stress financier américain cause du stress financier sur le marché canadien. Par la suite, la méthode d’analyse en composantes principales non linéaire par noyau (KPCA) est utilisée sur les données américaines et canadiennes. Cette nouvelle méthodologie permet de mieux illustrer le comouvement entre les séries temporelles, lorsque l’on admet des corrélations potentiellement non linéaires. Les résultats montrent que cette nouvelle méthode permet d’obtenir des graphiques dont le bruit est réduit, et avec des structures mieux définies. L’amplitude des évènements de stress est changée, mais l’indice garde la même évolution qualitative. / Financial markets are often affected by important perturbations, as witnessed during the 2008 financial meltdown. These perturbations can be seen as a form of financial stress and are defined as an interruption of normal working financial market. This thesis proposes to measure the financial stress in the Canadian market, using a principal component methodology used by the Saint-Louis Federal Reserve (KLIESEN and SMITH [2010]). Our results show that the financial stress occurring on the Canadian market is stongly related to financial stress: notably US financial stress granger causes financial stress on the Canadian market. Additionally, we use a kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) on both US and Canadian data, to account for second and third degree effects in covariance structures. The kernel analysis reduces the noise on the stress graph. Similar structures are visible and qualitative features are the same, but the relative amplitude of these structures is changed.

This thesis describes the relation between the tourism industry and crisis from a consumer perspective. The impacts on consumers have been receiving little attention in earlier tourism research. This study contains an empirical research with a focus on the attitudes of travellers during the refugee crisis of 2015. The attitudes are seen as interesting for this study since they can affect the traveller before, during and after the trip. In this work the attitudes further are divided into four different sub-categories, which were detected to be important in order to describe how the attitudes of travellers can be affected from a crisis. The performed study shows that the attitudes can be affected from a crisis in different ways. It also shows that the refugee crisis of 2015 had impacts on travellers, that might vary from person to person and that they might not be aware of themselves.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Ph.D. / This thesis investigates the impact of domestic and foreign financial crises on volatility dynamics in South Africa. In a sample ranging from January 1994 to March 2009, Chapter 2 provides empirical support for the theory that domestic currency crises are associated with significant structural changes in daily exchange rate volatility. Speciacally, crisis periods coincide with large positive shifts in unconditional variance. Using this fact, we propose a new method - the structural change generalised conditional heteroskedasticity, or SC-GARCH, model - for identifying precise start- and end-dates for crises. Chapter 3 studies volatility transmission within SA from October 1996 to June 2010. Using a generalised version of the vector autoregressive (VAR) approach, time-varying and bidirectional volatility spillover indices are esti- mated for domestic currency, bond and equity markets. The results identify equities as the primary source of volatility transfer to other asset classes. At di erent points in time, spillovers are responsible for anywhere between 7.5 and 65 percent of system-wide volatility. Local maxima in spillover magni- tudes are estimated during domestic, as well as foreign crisis periods. Chapter 4 estimates time-varying comovement between SA and world volatilities during the period from 1994 to 2008. A dynamic factor model (FM) is used to extract three latent global volatility factors from a data panel which is representative of the world equity market portfolio. Relative to most other emerging markets, the global factors are poor predictors of volatility in SA. However, SA's comovement with global volatility increases sharply in response to emerging market crises in Asia (1997-8) and Russia (1998). The global factors are also important determinants of domestic volatility during the latter stages of the US subprime crisis (2007-8). Chapter 5 proposes the factor-augmented VAR as a parsimonious model for the transmission of foreign volatility shocks to SA equities. We compare international volatility transmission resulting from crises in Asia (1997-8) and the US (2007-8). Although the US crisis has a larger impact on the world equity market, the Asian shock leads to more dramatic increases in volatility in emerging economies, including SA.

Orientador: Eduardo Strachman / Banca: Guilherme Santos Mello / Banca: André Luiz Correa / Resumo: Durante a crise financeira internacional de 2008, o governo federal brasileiro fez uso de políticas para manutenção da atividade econômica através de instrumentos de crédito dos bancos públicos, assim como a adoção de políticas fiscais e monetárias expansivas. A partir do uso de tais instrumentos, o Brasil apresentou resultados considerados satisfatórios na economia dentro do período da crise nos anos 2008 e 2009. Porém, no ano de 2010 o governo iniciou uma mudança no rumo da política econômica. A partir disso é observado um quadro de piora no desempenho da economia brasileira, ao passo que outros países apresentavam sinais de melhoras em suas economias. Este trabalho tem como objetivo geral compreender por que no Brasil se verificou um aprofundamento da crise financeira internacional de 2008 no período posterior, isto é, entre os anos de 2010 e 2014, e quais fatores contribuíram para isso. A hipótese é que o governo brasileiro reorientou a política econômica a partir de 2010 de modo errôneo, priorizando a austeridade fiscal, o que colaborou para o agravamento da crise no país. / Abstract: During the international financial crisis of 2008, the Brazilian federal government used policies for maintaining economic activity through public bank credit instruments, as well as adopted expansive fiscal and monetary policies. As a result Brazil presented satisfactory economic results during the crisis of 2008 and 2009. However, in 2010 the government initiated a change of path with the economic policy. That resulted in a worsening performance of the Brazilian economy contrary to the economic improvement in other countries. This dissertation aims to understand the reason for Brazil's delayed deepening in the 2008 international financial crisis, between 2010 and 2014, and to find what factors contributed to this. The hypothesis is that the Brazilian government erroneously changed the perspective of economic policy as of 2010 prioritizing fiscal austerity and in turn aggravating the national crisis. / Mestre

Thesis (M.M. (Finance & Investment)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Wits Business School, 2017 / The study examined the relationship between oil price shocks, volatilities and stock indices in the African emerging markets. The ARDL and Bivariate BEKK GARCH models are used in this study. The countries examined are Botswana, Egypt, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Tunisia, and the MSCI’s World Index. The study shows a bidirectional relationship between oil price shocks for Nigeria and the MSCI, but unidirectional flow from oil price shocks to Botswana, Egypt, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, and Tunisia. In addition, there is evidence of unidirectional volatility spill over from oil returns to Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, Mauritius and Kenyan, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya and Ghana. Finally, the study found bidirectional volatility between oil and index returns in MSCI, South Africa, and Tunisia. / MT2017