La tesi si compone di tre saggi su disoccupazione e mobilità del lavoro in Italia, presentando anche un focus sulla regione Lombardia, oltre che da una parte iniziale che inquadra tali tematiche. Il primo capitolo offre infatti una disamina degli sviluppi ed empirici connessi a disoccupazione e mobilità del lavoro. L’obiettivo di questa parte introduttiva è duplice. Da un lato si cerca di fornire un quadro pressochè esaustivo sulle evoluzioni teoriche ed empiriche connesse alle tematiche citate. D’altro lato si introducono le analisi oggetto dei successivi saggi come evoluzione degli sviluppi proposti dalla letteratura, enfatizzandone logiche sottostanti ed originalità. Il primo saggio analizza le determinanti della durata della disoccupazione ed i relativi “competing risks” per la regione Lombardia. La scelta di tale contesto non è casuale. La Lombardia, infatti, rappresenta una delle regioni economicamente più sviluppate ed i risultati ottenuti con tali metodologie di stima possono fornire spunti utili e rappresentativi sia delle regioni europee maggiormente sviluppate, sia di altre rilevanti regioni italiane (Emilia Romagna e Toscana). Il secondo saggio estende l’applicazione di modelli di durata e modelli a rischi competitivi all’intero territorio nazionale. In questo modo è possibile enfatizzare la rilevanza di tali tematiche per il contesto italiano, ed ottenere un quadro esaustivo circa l’evoluzione del fenomeno della durata della disoccupazione. Le tecniche utilizzate per tali analisi, ovviamente, differiscono ripetto a quelle impegate per la regione Lombardia, ed anche questo aspetto consente interessanti considerazioni. Il terzo saggio sposta l’attenzione alla rilevante tematica della mobilità del mercato del lavoro. Tale aspetto è ovviamente connesso al fenomeno della disoccupazione, e consente di approfondirne nonché di delinearne le possibili cause. In tale capitolo vengono proposte due metodologie di analisi. In primo luogo, ed a livello macro, sono fornite le stime aggregate dei flussi fra i principali stati o condizioni (occupazione, disoccupazione, inattività) del mercato del lavoro. Questo primo step consente appunto una prima quantificazione del fenomeno della mobilità. La seconda parte del capitolo si focalizza invece su una stima - a livello micro - delle determinanti delle transizioni fra gli stati del mercato del lavoro. Tale aspetto consente appunto di investigare ed esaminare le cause sottese alla mobilità riscontrata a livello macro. / Structured in three essays, this thesis focus on unemployment and labour mobility in Italy and Lombardy (the biggest Italian’s region). The first essay offers a picture of the main theoretical and the empirical issues related to these complex phenomena. The purpose of this section is twofold. On one hand we aim to offer an exhaustive picture of the theoretical and empirical developments of such phenomena. On the other hand, we introduce the empirical investigations of the subsequent essays as evolutions of the ones proposed by literature. We also emphases the original contribution and the logic behind. The second essay investigates the determinants of the unemployment duration and of the related competing risks (CRM hereafter) for Lombardy. The choice to concentrate the initial part of this dissertation on Lombardy is primarily driven by two factors. First, there is interest in applying relevant techniques to a regional context characterized by a certain degree of homogeneity of economic indicators. Further, Lombardy is one of the most important Italian regions (confirmed by many economics indicators), and is quite homogeneous in terms of labour market indicators (only little differences between provinces, with the north-east with the fewest unemployment problems), This allows verifying the effectiveness of these investigations of the determinants of unemployment duration and the related CRM without dealing with the typical dualism between north and south which is a structural feature of the Italian labour market. This is a way to investigate in depth the characteristics of the relevant phenomenon of unemployment for a significant partition of Italy, which is representative of both richest regions in Europe and Italian regions as well (such as Tuscany or Emilia Romagna). The third essay enlarges the attention to Italy by employing techniques of unemployment duration and competing risks to analyse the overall Italian unemployment and its main exit routes. Those are tools to get an exhaustive picture and relevant insights on the evolution of the Italian unemployment duration. The techniques employed for the overall country obviously differ from the ones used for the region of Lombardy, and these differences also offer the scope for interesting considerations. The fourth essay deals with the relevant issue of labour market mobility. This is a theme quite linked to unemployment, since it allows understanding and exploring its causes. We focus on two different kind of analysis. At macro level, we estimate the gross flows between the relevant labour market states of employment, unemployment, and inactivity (three-state representation of the labour market) to quantify the overall labour market mobility. The second part of this section, instead, offers micro econometrics estimates of the determinants of such labour market transitions, to investigate the causes of such mobility.

A compreensão da dinâmica de persistência e evasão da atividade exportadora é fundamental para o desenho de incentivos adequados às firmas estreantes no mercado internacional e encontra respaldo nos modelos da nova teoria do comércio internacional. O propósito deste trabalho é investigar os determinantes do desempenho de firmas industriais brasileiras estreantes no mercado internacional, em termos de probabilidade de sobrevivência e evolução do valor exportado, com especial atenção aos impactos dos instrumentos de apoio Drawback, BNDES Exim e Proex. Para tanto, serão analisadas empresas estreantes no comércio exterior entre os anos de 1998 e 2003, configurando um painel desbalanceado com 8,5 mil firmas. Por meio de análise econométrica para dados em painel e estimação de modelos de duração, verificou-se que a função de sobrevivência e crescimento do valor médio exportado no tempo difere claramente entre firmas que utilizam um dos benefícios e aquelas que não o fazem. Também se pode afirmar que custos irreversíveis de entrada no comércio internacional não sejam desprezíveis entre as firmas industriais analisadas, o que indica que os programas públicos de promoção de exportações devam se concentrar na (i) redução da taxa de abandono das recém-exportadoras e (ii) na minimização dos custos fixos associados aos investimentos para entrada no mercado exportador. / Understanding the dynamics of persistence and evasion of export activity is essential for the design of export promotion for new exporters and international trade policies. Several results point to the importance of taking into account the specific sector of the industry in the implementation of public policies, which is supported by the new models of international trade theory. The purpose of this work is to investigate the determinants of the performance of Brazilian industrial new exporters, with particular attention to the impacts of Drawback, BNDES Exim and Proex. For this, we analyzed firms between the 1998 and 2003, constituting an unbalanced panel with 8500 firms. By panel data analysis and estimation of duration models, we found that the survival function and the growth of exports clearly differs among companies that use one of the programs and those that do not. One can also say that sunk costs are not negligible among the industrial firms analyzed, which indicates that public export promotion should focus on (i) reducing the dropout rate of new exporters and (ii) minimize the fixed sunk costs related with initial investments to begin the export activty.

Cette thèse porte sur l'offre de travail et les décisions de fécondité des femmes en France. Dans le Chapitre 2, j’estime un modèle hierarchique en utilisant des micro-données Françaises et Allemandes. Le but étant de voir de quelle manière les régions Françaises et Allemandes différent, une fois que l’on contrôle pour des variables individuelles. Le Chapitre 3 étudie l'impact d'une première, d'une deuxième et d'une troisième naissance sur l'offre de travail et les salaires des femmes et des hommes. La question ici est de voir dans quelle mesure ces naissances ont un impact négatif, voire peut-être même positif dans le cas des hommes. Le Chapitre 4 étudie la durée qu’une mère passe hors du travail après la naissance de son premier enfant, et comment elle décide de retourner en activité. Un modèle de risques concurrents est utilisé pour cela. Le chapitre 5 présente un logiciel de gestion de versions. Ce type de logiciel simplifie grandement la production scientifique. / This thesis focuses on the labour supply and fertility decisions of women in France. In Chapter 2, I estimate a hierarchical model using French and German micro-data. The aim is to see how the French and German regions differ, once you control for individual variables. Chapter 3 examines the impact of first, second and third births on the labour supply and wages of women and men. The question here is to see to what extent these births have a negative impact, and perhaps even a positive one in the case of men. Chapter 4 examines how long a mother spends out of work after the birth of her first child, and how she decides to return to work. A competing risks model is used for this. Chapter 5 presents version control software. This type of software greatly simplifies scientific production.

From the Proceedings of the 1971 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - April 22-23, 1971, Tempe, Arizona / Quantitative descriptions of regional differences of rainfall amounts and intensities in the southwest, such as depth-duration frequencies, generally have ignored differences in the storm system that generated the rainfall and have lumped essentially different storm systems together. Thunderstorm rainfall in southern Arizona and New Mexico were analyzed using data from both recording and standard rain gages. The results were somewhat conflicting. Possibly because of more frontal activity and less distance from the Gulf of Mexico., the thunderstorms in eastern New Mexico can be more intense than those in southeastern Arizona. Recording rain gage records suggest that air-mass thunderstorms produce a larger number of more intense short-duration (about 1 hour or less) rains in southeastern Arizona than in other parts of southern Arizona. However, standard rain gage records from southern Arizona indicate that rainfall from individual air-mass thunderstorms may be greater in south-central Arizona than in se or sw Arizona. But frequency analysis of standard gage data from air-mass storms shows that the 100-year point rainfall is about 3 inches in all 3 regions. With more data becoming available, especially from remote areas, more exact separation of thunderstorm types and a better definition of rainfall will soon be possible.

Esta tesis evalúa el papel de las características no deseadas del trabajo - llamadas disamenities - en el contexto del balance entre trabajo y familia. Particularmente, se plantean las siguientes preguntas: ¿es el descenso en el salario de las mujeres luego del nacimiento del primer hijo - llamado child penalty - acompañado por una reducción simultánea en las disamenities?; ¿cuánto salario están dispuestas las madres a sacrificar para reducir las disamenities?; ¿las disamenities propias del trabajo de las madres tienen algún efecto sobre el desarrollo cognitivo de sus hijos? En el capitulo I se describe empíricamente como las características del trabajo de las madres cambian luego del nacimiento del primer hijo y se testea la hipótesis de que si el child penalty se puede explicar como un diferencial salarial compensatorio. En el capitulo II se estima la disposición marginal a pagar de las madres para reducir las disamenities. La estrategia de identificación está basada en la baja por maternidad, la cual constituye un contexto que permite modelar más cabalmente la decisión sobre la participación laboral; y por consiguiente, mejora la metodología existente para estimar la disposición marginal a pagar por parte de las madres. Finalmente, en el capitulo III se investiga el impacto de las disamenities del trabajo de las madres sobre el desarrollo infantil. / This dissertation evaluates the role of job disamenities - job characteristics disliked by workers - in the context of work-family balance. In particular, the following questions are raised. Is the decrease in mothers' wages around first childbirth - the so-called child penalty - accompanied by a simultaneous reduction in job disamenities? How much wage are mothers willing to sacrifice in order to reduce job disamenities? Do disamenities involved in mothers' occupations go on to affect parenting behaviour and as a result harm children's cognitive development? Chapter I provides empirical evidence for changes in maternal working conditions around first childbirth and tests the hypothesis if the child penalty can be explained by a compensating wage differential? Chapter II estimates mothers' marginal willingness to pay to reduce job disamenities. The identification strategy relies on the framework of maternal leave, a setting which allows us to model mothers' decision to join the labor force accurately and hence to improve on the existing methodology to estimate the marginal willingness to pay. Chapter III investigates how disamenities involved in mothers' occupation go on to affect children's cognitive outcomes.

Cette thèse s’intéresse d’une part aux effets macroéconomiques des régimes de change, et d’autre part, aux récentes évolutions sur la politique budgétaire et la décentralisation. La partie I met essentiellement l’accent sur l’interaction entre les régimes de change (RC) et la politique budgétaire, monétaire et fiscale. Tout d’abord, nous mettons en évidence que les RC peuvent avoir un effet stabilisateur sur la politique budgétaire (chapitre 1). Cependant, cet effet stabilisateur des RC n’est pas automatique mais dépendrait plutôt des conséquences d’une politique budgétaire laxiste. Le chapitre 2 s’intéresse quant à lui à la causalité entre RC et crises (bancaire/financière, de change et de dette) et remet en cause la vision bipolaire qui prétendait que les RC intermédiaires sont plus vulnérables aux crises que les solutions en coin (RC fixes/flexibles). Il ressort de notre analyse que les fondamentaux macroéconomiques (la volatilité du crédit au secteur privé, le financement du déficit, et le ratio dette sur PIB) jouent un rôle considérable. Le chapitre 3 met en évidence un lien entre les RC et la politique fiscale. Les pays à RC fixes montrent une plus grande dépendance aux recettes domestiques –telles que la TVA-, comparativement aux pays en change intermédiaires/flexibles pour compenser les pertes de recettes de seigneuriage (effet de substitution). De plus, ces pays avec RC fixes collectent plus de recettes domestiques en compensation de la perte de recettes douanières, suite à la libéralisation commerciale (effet de compétitivité). Dans les trois derniers chapitres (partie II), nous mettons le focus sur la politique budgétaire et les effets de la décentralisation. Le chapitre 4 révèle une relation non-linéaire entre la politique budgétaire et le cycle économique, qui dépend du niveau de la dette publique. Lorsque celle-ci dépasse un certain seuil (87%), la politique budgétaire perd toute propriété contra-cyclique. Nous montrons par ailleurs que l’effet disciplinaire ex-ante des règles budgétaires aide à restaurer la contra-cyclicité de la politique budgétaire. A travers le chapitre 5, nous montrons que la décentralisation budgétaire, dans un cadre politico-institutionnel sein et dépourvu de corruption, améliore l’offre de biens et services publics. Le chapitre 6 conclut que la décentralisation impacte positivement le solde structurel. Cependant une asymétrie entre la décentralisation des dépenses et celle des recettes accroit la dépendance des gouvernements locaux vis-à-vis du gouvernement central en termes de transferts, et amoindrirait considérablement à l’effet positif de la décentralisation. / This thesis explored, in two parts, the macroeconomic impacts of exchange rate regimes (ERR), as well as the recent developments in fiscal policy and fiscal decentralization. Part I has reconsidered the role of ERR and its interplay with fiscal, monetary and tax policy. The first result that emerges (Chapter 1) is that fixed ERR can serve as a credible policy tool for stabilizing fiscal policy. However, this stabilizing effect is conditional upon the inter-temporal distribution of the costs of loose fiscal policy. In assessing the linkage between ERR and crises (banking/financial, currency and debt), Chapter 2 evidenced that the bipolar view is no longer valid, and that, crisis proneness rather depends on the macroeconomic fundamentals (the volatility of private sector credit, the deficit-financing mechanism, and the debt-to-GDP ratio). In Chapter 3, we unveiled a strong relationship between ERR and tax policy. Countries with pegged regimes have greater reliance on domestic taxation -such as the VAT- to make up for the loss of seigniorage revenue (substitution effect). Moreover, peggers tend to collect more VAT revenue to offset the shortfall in cross border taxes following the trade liberalization reform (competitiveness effect). Part II discussed the cyclical response of fiscal policy in high debt periods, and focused on fiscal decentralization issues. In Chapter 4, we showed that the reaction of fiscal policy to the business cycle is non-linear and conditional to the level of public debt. When the debt-to-GDP ratio goes beyond a certain threshold (87%), fiscal policy loses its counter-cyclical properties. Further, we highlighted that carefully-designed fiscal rules help maintaining counter-cyclicality through an ex ante disciplinary effect. Chapters 5 and 6 analyzed the impact of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of public service delivery and fiscal policy performance, respectively. Chapter 5 revealed that a sufficient level of expenditure decentralization, coupled with revenue decentralization, improves the efficiency of public service delivery. However, the political and institutional environment is critical for reaping decentralization-led benefits. Lastly, Chapter 6 concluded that fiscal decentralization has destabilizing effect by reducing the counter-cyclicality of fiscal policy. In addition, we found that decentralization strengthens the structural fiscal balance; however, vertical fiscal imbalances reduce the benefits of decentralization. It is therefore critical to limit asymmetries between expenditure and revenue decentralization, so as to reduce the transfer-dependency of local governments to the central level, and thus prevent decentralization from weakening the fiscal stance at the general government level.

Landwirtschaftliche Systeme müssen sich immerfort an Druckfaktoren wie Klimawandel und Bevölkerungswachstum anpassen. Hierbei spielt die genetische Vielfalt von Pflanzen eine wichtige Rolle, da diese für die Sicherung der Ernährung und des Einkommens von entscheidender Bedeutung ist. Dennoch wird der wirtschaftliche Wert pflanzengenetischer Ressourcen selten untersucht. Um diese Forschungslücke zu schließen, werden in dieser Arbeit drei Bewertungen vorgestellt, welche die wirtschaftlichen Werte pflanzengenetischer Ressourcen untersuchen. Im Rahmen dieser Dissertation werden zwei verschiedene Agrarsystemen analysiert. Diese unterscheiden sich hinsichtlich des Klimas, der agrarökologischen Bedingungen, der landwirtschaftlichen Praxis, der politischen und ökonomischen Rahmenbedingungen sowie der soziokulturellen Verankerung der Kulturart. Die ersten beiden Analysen befassen sich mit der Züchtung und Produktion von Winterweizen in Deutschland. Charakterisiert sind diese durch ein gemäßigtes Klima und intensive Anbaubedingungen. In diesem System überwiegen moderne Sorten, die in einem formalisierten Züchtungsprozess entstanden sind. Es werden die folgenden Forschungsfragen beantwortet: 1) Was ist der ökonomische Wert, der durch den Austausch von Zuchtmaterial entsteht? und 2) Wie hoch ist der mikroökonomische Wert von Resistenzzüchtung? In der dritten Analyse wird ein weiteres Agrarsystem vorgestellt: Die Andenlandwirtschaft, wo im Hochland unter extensiven Bedingungen eine Vielzahl von Kartoffellandrassen angebaut wird. Dort wird folgende Frage analysiert: 3) Welche Mehrwerte wurden durch die Repatriierung oder Neuverteilung von Kartoffellandrassen erzielt? Diese Analysen zeigen, dass die Verfügbarkeit, der Austausch und die Nutzung von pflanzengenetischen Ressourcen die Agrarproduktion verbessern; es entstehen sowohl sektorale, mikroökonomische als auch ernährungsbezogene und kulturelle Mehrwerte. / Agricultural systems must constantly adapt to pressuring events such as climate change and population growth to maintain and improve production processes in a sustainable manner. Thereby the genetic diversity of plants used in agriculture constitute a strategic asset. Nevertheless, their economic value is often overlooked. To fill this research gap, this thesis presents three assessments that produce more evidence on the economic value of plant genetic resources. Two very distinct agricultural systems are discussed. These differ greatly in terms of climate, agroecological conditions, farming practices, seed systems, political and economic frameworks, and the socio-cultural embeddedness of the crop in question. The first two assessments are concerned with winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) breeding and production in the temperate climate and intensive growing conditions in Germany. Modern cultivars created in a formalized breeding process prevail in this system. The following two research questions are elaborated: 1) What is the economic value of exchanging breeding material? and 2) What is the microeconomic value of resistance breeding? The third assessment presents a different agricultural system: Andean agriculture, where a wide variety of potato landraces (Solanum spp.) are grown extensively in the Peruvian highlands. In this case, the research question I investigated is: 3) What are the benefits of repatriating (i.e., redistributing) potato landraces to Andean farmers? These studies demonstrate that the availability, exchange, and adoption of plant genetic resources, which are well adapted to and culturally embedded in specific agricultural systems, improve the overall quantity and sustainability of agricultural production. These improvements can be translated into sectoral, microeconomic as well as nutritional and cultural benefits.