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This dissertation consists of two essays in international macroeconomics. The first essay shows that optimal fiscal and monetary policy is time consistent in a standard small open economy. Further, there exist many maturity structures of public debt capable of rendering the optimal policy time consistent. This result is in sharp contrast with that obtained in the context of closed-economy models. In the closed economy, the time consistency of optimal monetary and fiscal policy imposes severe restrictions on public debt in the form of a unique term structure of public debt that governments can leave to their successors at each point in time. The time consistent result is robust: optimal policy is time consistent when both real and nominal bonds have finite horizons. While in a closed economy, governments must have both nominal and real bonds, and have at least real bonds over an infinite horizon to render optimal policy time consistent. The second essay uses a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to theoretically rationalize the empirical finding that sudden stops have weaker effects on outputs when the small open economy is more open to trade. First, welfare costs of sudden stops are decreasing in trade openness. The reason is that when the economy is more open to trade, the economy will have less volatile capital, which leads to less volatile output. In terms of welfare, when the small open economy is more open to trade, the welfare costs of sudden stops will be smaller. Second, sudden stops may be welfare improving to the small open economy. This is because when the representative household is a net borrower in the international capital market, its consumption will be negatively correlated with country spread. Since utility is a concave function of consumption, it must be a convex function of country spread. That is, when the country spread is more volatile, the mean utility is higher. The two findings are robust: they hold with one sector economy model, and two sector economy models with homogenous capital and heterogenous capital. In addition, this paper shows that a counter-cyclical tariff rate policy is not welfare-improving. / Dissertation

<p>This dissertation presents a quantitative study on the relationship between financial intermediation and the macroeconomy of the United States. It consists of two major chapters, with the first chapter studying adverse shocks to interbank market lending, and with the second chapter studying a theoretical model where aggregate balance sheets of the financial and non-financial sectors play a key role in financial intermediation frictions.</p><p>In the first chapter, I empirically investigate a novel macroeconomic shock: the funding liquidity shock. Funding liquidity is defined as the ability of a (financial) institution to raise cash at short notice, with interbank market loans being a very common source of short-term external funding. Using the "TED spread" as a proxy of aggregate funding liquidity for the period from 1971M1 to 2009M9, I first discover that, by using the vector-autoregression approach, an unanticipated adverse TED shock brings significant recessionary effects: industrial production and prices fall, and the unemployment rate rises. The contraction lasts for about twenty months. I also recover the conventional monetary policy shock, the macro impact of which is in line with the results of Christiano et al (1998) and Christiano et al (2005) . I then follow the factor model approach and find that the excess returns of small-firm portfolios are more negatively impacted by an adverse funding liquidity shock. I also present evidence that this shock as a "risk factor" is priced in the cross-section of equity returns. Moreover, a proposed factor model which includes the structural funding liquidity and monetary policy shocks as factors is able to explain the cross-sectional returns of portfolios sorted on size and book-to-market ratio as well as the Fama and French (1993) three-factor model does. Lastly, I present empirical evidence that funding liquidity and market liquidity mutually affect each other.</p><p>I start the second chapter by showing that, in U.S. data, the balance sheet health of the financial sector, as measured by its equity capital and debt level, is a leading indicator of the balance sheet health of the nonfinancial sector. This fact, and the apparent role of the financial sector in the recent global financial crisis, motivate a general equilibrium macroeconomic model featuring the balance sheets of both sectors. I estimate and study a model within the "loanable funds" framework of Holmstrom and Tirole (1997), which introduces a double moral hazard problem in the financial intermediation process. I find that financial frictions modeled within this framework give rise to a shock transmission mechanism quantitatively different from the one that arises with the conventional modeling assumption, in New Keynesian business cycle models, of convex investment adjustment costs. Financial equity capital plays an important role in determining the depth and persistence of declines in output and investment due to negative shocks to the economy. Moreover, I find that shocks to the financial intermediation process cause persistent recessions, and that these shocks explain a significant portion of the variation in investment. The estimated model is also able to replicate some aspects of the cross-correlation structure of the balance sheet variables of the two sectors.</p> / Dissertation

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In retrospect, telecommunication technology and services have seen incessant renovation and development. The wave of liberalization is also the inexorable trend in the global telecommunications industry, the telecommunications industry in Taiwan can not be excluded itself from the trend. The telecommunications industry in Taiwan has been opened by degrees and sought to establish a fair competitive environment. In the meantime, there are several important changes no matter in facets of regulatory regimes, industrial structure, technology, or market demand, etc. The environment of telecommunications industry became more volatile than the monopoly one's. We extend the opinion of Noam (2006) who observed the long-term upturn and downturn in the American telecommunications industry and concluded that that volatility and cyclicality will be an inherent part of the telecommunication sector in the future. First, in our thesis we explore the cyclical behavior of Taiwan telecommunications industry. As the turning point of the telecommunications industry may be obscure, we adopt a Markov Regime-Switching model with two regimes representing contraction and expansion. This nonlinear, two states, regime-switching model shows that Taiwan telecommunications industry has suffered from the cyclic fluctuation since the liberalization had been followed out. We focus on the mobile phone industry thereafter in this study. Since three telecommunication-related laws passed in 1996, the mobile phone industry is the first industry implemented the liberalization policy. In the process of the mobile phone industry's evolution, the carriers in this industry all experience the rapid growth in the mobile phone penetration rate and the fierce competition. Hence, to identify the main explanatory factors of the mobile phone industry fluctuation and cycles we introduce an 11-variable vector autoregressive (VAR) model. The empirical results confirm that the mobile phone industry' output can be influenced by five factors mainly including the macroeconomic status, demand, network effect, relative equipment import price, and output price, and furthermore, the impetus of the liberalization policy and the progress of the technology also play an important role beyond the five main factors in terms of the separate carriers' analysis.

<p>As a result of their unique heat recovery properties,Humidified Gas Turbine (HGT) cycles have the potential todeliver resource-effective energy to society. The EvaporativeGas Turbine (EvGT) Consortium in Sweden has been studying thesetypes of cycles for nearly a decade, but now stands at acrossroads, with commercial demonstration remaining. Thisthesis binds together several key elements for the developmentof humidified gas turbines: water recovery and air and waterquality in the cycle, cycle selection for near-term, mid-sizedpower generation, and identifying a feasible niche market fordemonstration and market penetration. Moreover, possiblesocio-technical hinders for humidified gas turbine developmentare examined.</p><p>Through modelling saltcontaminant flows in the cycle andverifying the results in the pilot plant, it was found thathumidification tower operation need not endanger the hot gaspath. Moreover, sufficient condensate can be condensed to meetfeed water demands. Air filters were found to be essential tolower the base level of contaminant in the cycle. This protectsboth the air and water stream components. By capturing airparticles of a similar size to the air filters, the humidifieractually lowers air stream salt levels. Measures to minimisedroplet entrainment were successful (50 mg droplets/kg air) andmodels predict a 1% blow down from the water circuit issufficient. The condensate is very clean, with less than 1 mg/lalkali salts and easily deionised.</p><p>Based on a core engine parameter analysis for three HGTcycle configurations and a subsequent economic study, asteam-cooled steam injected cycle complemented with part-flowhumidification is recommended for the mid-size power market.This cycle was found to be particularly efficient at highpressures and turbine inlet temperatures, conditions eased bysteam cooling and even intercooling. The recommended HGT cyclegives specific investment costs 30- 35% lower than the combinedcycles and cost of electricity levels were 10-18% lower.Full-flow intercooled EvGT cycles give high performances, butseem to be penalised by the recuperator costs, while stillbeing cheaper than the CC. District heating is suggested as asuitable niche market to commercially demonstrate the HGTcycle. Here, the advantages of HGT are especially pronounceddue their very high total efficiencies. Feasibility prices forelectricity were up to 35% lower than competing combinedcycles. HGT cycles were also found to effectively include wasteheat sources.</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>gas turbines, evaporative gas turbines,humidification, power generation, combined heat and powergeneration.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept of Economics, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Sciences économiques : Le Mans : 2008. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre.

Reproduction de : Thèse d'Etat : sciences mathématiques : Grenoble 1 : 1987. / Thèse soutenue sur un ensemble de travaux. Titre provenant de l'écran-titre.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2003. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-62). Also available on the World Wide Web.