Thèse--Sc. pol.--Genève, 1973. N°: 249. / Bibliogr. p. 211-222. Index.

This thesis consists in a collection of research works dealing with various aspects of International Economics. More precisely, we focus on three main themes: (i) the existence of a world business cycle and the implications thereof, (ii) the likelihood of asymmetric shocks in the Euro Zone resulting from fluctuations in the euro exchange rate because of differences in sector specialization patterns and some consequences of such shocks, and (iii) the relationship between trade openness and growth influence of the sector specialization structure on that relationship. Regarding the approach pursued to tackle these problems, we have chosen to strictly remain within the boundaries of empirical (macro)economics - that is, applied econometrics. Though we systematically provide theoretical models to back up our empirical approach, our only real concern is to look at the stories the data can (or cannot) tell us. As to the econometric methodology, we will restrict ourselves to the use of panel data analysis. The large spectrum of techniques available within the panel framework allows us to utilize, for each of the problems at hand, the most suitable approach (or what we think it is).

Texte remanié de: Thèse--Sc. écon.--Lyon II, 1974. / Bibliogr. p. 280-289.

Dans cette thèse de doctorat en sciences économiques, dont le thème est « Régimes de Change et Performances Économiques en Afrique Sub-saharienne », nous avons développé une analyse cherchant à montrer le lien entre le régime de change et les performances économiques des pays en Afrique Sub-Saharienne (ASS). Pour réaliser les analyses comparatives, l’échantillon global, ASS, a d’abord été subdivisé entre les pays de l’union monétaire, dont les pays de la zone CFA (ZCFA), et les pays hors union monétaire ou les pays hors zone CFA (HZCFA), et, il a ensuite été subdivisé entre les pays de l’Union Économique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine (UEMOA), les pays de la Communauté Économique et Monétaire de l’Afrique Centrale (CEMAC), les pays HZCFA avec les régimes de change fixe et les pays HZCFA avec les régimes de change flexible. Notre analyse se concentre sur les thèmes suivants :1. Les régimes de change et les politiques monétaires en ASS2. La convergence entre la zone UEMOA et la zone CEMAC3. Les régimes de change et les instabilités macroéconomiques en ASS4. Les régimes de change, le TCR et son ajustement en ASS5. Les régimes de change, les instabilités macroéconomiques et la croissance économique en ASS.Les études empiriques que nous avons menées sur ces thèmes ont conduit à des résultats très contrastés et variées selon les sous-échantillons. Les résultats montrent que les régimes de change n’ont pas été bien gérés en ASS et qu’ils y ont été utilisés parfois comme des moyens de dissimulation des résultats économiques inefficaces et inefficients causés par les mauvaises politiques et décisions économiques. / In this PhD. thesis titled “Exchange Rate Regimes and Economic Performances in Sub-Saharan Africa”, we carried out analysis to show the relationship between the choice of exchange rate regimes and economic performances in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In order to proceed to comparative analysis, first we breakdown the global sample (SSA) into two, which are the monetary union countries or CFA franc zone countries (ZCFA) and the non-monetary union countries or countries outside CFA franc zone (HZCFA), then we breakdown the sample into four subsample, which are the West Africa Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) countries, the Central Africa Economic and Monetary Community (CAEMC) countries, the HZCFA countries with fixed exchange rate regimes and the HZCFA countries with flexible exchange rate regimes. Our analysis focuses on the following topics:1. Exchange rate regimes and monetary policies in SSA2. Convergence between WAEMU and CAEMC3. Exchange rate regimes and macroeconomic instabilities in SSA4. Exchange rate regimes, Real exchange rate and its adjustment in SSA5. Exchange rate regimes, macroeconomic instabilities and economic growth in SSAThe empirical results based on topics mentioned above conducted to mixed results depending on our subsamples. Also, they show that the exchange rate regimes have not been well managed in SSA, and that they have been sometimes used as means to hide bad economic results induced by non-effective economic policies and non-effective economic decisions.

This dissertation consists of three essays in which I study the political economy of trade agreements. Using detailed information from lobbying reports filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, I systematically explore the role played by both the winners and the losers of globalization. The first chapter focuses on the winners, large multinational firms lobbying in favor of the ratification of free trade agreements. The second chapter looks at these winners when they lose, studying the impact of the non-ratification of a trade agreement on their profits. The last chapter focuses on labor interests and trade unions, the losers of globlalization.The first chapter (joint with Paola Conconi and Mathieu Parenti) is focused on firms. We show that the political economy of free trade agreements (FTAs) is dominated by large firms engaged in international trade that support the ratification of these agreements. We develop a model of endogenous lobbying on FTAs by heterogeneous firms, which can explain why only large pro-FTA firms select into lobbying. The model also delivers predictions on the intensive margin of lobbying. In line with these predictions, we find that larger firms spend more supporting a given FTA, and individual firms spend more supporting FTAs that generate larger gains – i.e. larger improvements in access to foreign consumers and suppliers and smaller increases in domestic competition – and that are more likely to be opposed by politicians.The second chapter (joint with Moritz Hennicke) is an event study on the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the subsequent shock to U.S. trade policy – the non-ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). We provide empirical evidence that corporate lobbying on trade agreements matters for corporate profits. We find that stock prices of companies that lobbied in favor of the TPP underperformed following Trump’s election. On the intensive margin, we find a strong and positive relationship between the amount spent in lobbying and the cumulative losses of lobbying firms. Finally, by comparing the original TPP agreement with its newer version (CPTPP), without U.S. participation, we provide evidence that firms’ lobbying activity was related to having some specific provisions included in the agreement. In the third chapter, I focus on the role played by trade unions, studying both their lobbying expenditures and their campaign contributions to politicians. I first show that unions are the main opposing force to the ratification of FTAs, and that larger unions, operating in tradable sectors, are more likely to lobby against FTAs. I then study union’s PAC contributions to political parties. During the last three decades, more than 90% of unions’ PAC contributions were directed to Democratic candidates. This has drastically changed when the Republican party took a more protectionist stance under Trump. I find that unions that lobbied against the ratification of FTAs started contributing more to Republican congressmen, particularly those who have taken an anti-trade stance. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Depuis deux décennies, le tourisme s'est affirmé comme une activité majeure dans les échanges mondiaux. De nombreux paramètres en révèlent l'importance : les flux touristiques représenteraient actuellement 11% du PIB mondial, avec des taux de croissance particulièrement élevés dans les pays en développement et en transition. L'importance du tourisme en tant qu'industrie créatrice d'emplois, de devises et de croissance dans les pays en développement n'a été reconnue que récemment. Néanmoins, malgré ses retombées stimulantes sur la croissance économique, l'expérience, corroborée par de nombreux travaux théoriques et empiriques, montre que la spécialisation touristique n'est pas exempte de risques et d'effets pervers. Certes, le tourisme exerce des effets positifs sur la balance des paiements, sur l'emploi et sur la production, du moins au niveau macroéconomique. Mais il peut par ailleurs exercer des effets lourdement négatifs sur l'environnement et compromettre les perspectives d'un développement durable. En outre, la spécialisation touristique peut souvent entraver le développement régional, en conduisant à des processus de désîndustrialisation et de recul des activités productives. Dans plusieurs pays, les retombées ambiguës ou incertaines de la croissance touristique ont souvent été observées : 1 ) la prédominance monopolistique des tour-opérateurs qui vendent des images stéréotypées, à travers des produits homogènes et sans diversification de l'offre ; 2) une croissance touristique géographiquement concentrée, fortement consommatrice de ressources et destructrice des écosystèmes ; 3) des processus d'exclusion sociale à l'égard de populations locales, souvent marginalisées ou confinées dans des activités à bas salaires, Notre recherche utilise différents instruments conceptuels, majoritairement empruntés à l'économie internationale et à l'ëconométrie. Les résultats de nos travaux s'articulent autour de deux axes constitutifs de deux parties distinctes :1)Déterminants et impacts du tourisme international sur la croissance, Dans cette première partie, sur la base principalement d'études empirico-statistiques en termes de données de panel, nous évaluons la signification de la spécialisation touristique par référence notamment au concept d'avantage comparatif Nous présentons deux séries de travaux de nature supply side et demand side, en nous référant préalablement aux substrats des théories du commerce international, dans le contexte d'un essor mondial de l'économie des services. A cet égard, nos recherches accordent une attention prioritaire à l'Asie du Sud-Est 2) Croissance touristique, exploitation des ressources et développement durable. Le tourisme est souvent perçu comme un facteur efficient de développement local, dans la mesure où il exerce des effets de liaison et de multiplication. Cependant, ce point de vue optimiste doit être tempéré, compte tenu de l'existence de nombreux effets de déperdition au détriment des tissus productifs et de retombées sur l'environnement. Dans la lignée de nombreux travaux, en empruntant au concept marshallien de << district industriel » et sur la base de modélisations en termes d'équilibre général, nous démontrons que la spécialisation touristique peut engendrer, au moins au niveau local, des situations de « croissance appauvrissante », avec une aggravation du sous-emploi structurel, un recul des productions et un épuisement des ressources naturelles. En conclusion, nos recherches, sans contester Futilité socio-économique du tourisme, nous amènent à formuler des diagnostics nuancés et des pronostics de prudence sur un phénomène dont l'importance s'affirmera encore davantage dans les pays en développement et en transition au cours des prochaines décennies.

This thesis consists of three chapters. The first two are regarding the political economy of international trade, the third is about empirical banking.Chapter 1 is titled "Suspiciously Timed Trade Disputes" and it is the result a joint work with Paola Conconi, David DeRemer, Georg Kirchsteiger, and Maurzio Zanardi. This Chapter is already published in the Volume 105 of the Journal of International Economics and it shows that electoral incentives crucially affect the initiation of trade disputes. Focusing on WTO disputes filed by the United States during the 1995-2014 period, we find that U.S. presidents are more likely to initiate a dispute in the year preceding their re-election. Moreover, U.S. trade disputes are more likely to involve industries that are important in swing states. To explain these regularities, we develop a theoretical model in which re-election motives can lead an incumbent politician to file trade disputes to appeal to voters motivated by reciprocity. The second chapter, titled "Trade Policy and the China Syndrome", analyzes how trade policy can be used to smooth the effects of trade liberalizations. The recent backlash against free trade is partially motivated by the decline in manufacturing employment due to rising import competition from China. Politicians in high-income countries have extensively used antidumping (AD) measures and other temporary trade barriers to protect their economies from rising Chinese imports. To estimate the causal effect of trade protection on industry outcomes, I construct a new instrument for AD measures based on the importance of an industry in swing states and the industry's experience at filing AD petitions. In this paper, I first show that trade policy contained the rise of Chinese imports in protected sectors, decreasing the annual growth rate of US imports from China in a range between 3% and 14% compared to the non-protected sectors. Second, I show that these protectionist measures have contained the "China Syndrome". In manufacturing sectors protected by AD measures, the annual growth rate of employment was between 2% and 24% higher compared to non-protected sectors. I find that previous studies that neglect the moderating impact of AD have underestimated the negative effects of Chinese import competition on US manufacturing employment by between 5% and 15%.The third chapter, titled "Bank Lending Standards and Credit to Firms during the Great Recession", is a joint work with Lorenzo Ricci and Giovanni Soggia. This chapter investigates the impact of unforeseen shifts in lending standards on firm credit in Italy on the onset of the Great Recession, using data from the Regional Bank Lending Survey to disentangle the effects of loan supply and demand.We combine our measure of change in bank supply with bank-firm loans retrieved from the credit register. Our proposed empirical strategy presents several benefits: it allows us to (i) estimate the impact of credit supply in the absence of an exogenous shock to banks, (ii) analyze credit policy throughout the sample period, and (iii) disentangle the effect of geographical heterogeneity within Italy using the rich information from our survey data. The effect of supply shocks differs across types of loans. A firm with a revocable credit line from a bank that tightens its lending standards suffers a reduction in credit growth more than if it had borrowed from a bank with unchanged lending standard. On the extensive margin, a supply shock decreases the acceptance probability of a new loan with a pronounced effect for term loans. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Firms are central to the functioning of the economy. Ever since Smith (1838) and Coase (1937), economists have gone a long way trying to understand why firms exist, how they are organized, and how they interact through the market.This thesis contributes to the study of how regulation and market incentives can affect firm decisions and their organization. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The PhD dissertation studies the construction of trade protection in the United States and the European Union. It focuses in particular on measures of contingent protection, comprising anti-dumping duties, countervailing duties and safeguards. The dissertation adopts a constructivist approach based on narrative analysis: broadening the conventional scope of political economy research on trade, the analysis combines the study of narratives with the concept of ‘discourse coalition’. The period under investigation spans over the period 2010-2014, covering the Obama Administration and the mandate of European Commissioner for trade Karel De Gucht. Adopting a comparative approach of the US and EU trade policy, the dissertation provides a detailed analysis of the US administration’s and the European Commission’s discourses on trade protection, and includes an analysis of a large array of other actors’ alternative, or competing constructions of contingent protection. The dissertation demonstrates that a specific type of unilateral enforcement plays an underestimated role in the construction of contingent protection. It also emphasizes that policy actors consider contingent protection as necessary to convince people that the trading system is fair; the research proposes the concept of ‘discursive embedded liberalism’ to account for this specific construction of trade protection. The research underlines elements of continuity and change, showing that many elements of the current crisis within the international trade regime were already in the making in the period under investigation. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Texte remanié de: Th. État--Sci. écon.--Paris 1. / Bibliogr. p. 255-263. Index.