The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on March 19, 2010). Thesis advisor: Dr. Charles Davis. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis explores the experience – experience itself – of the economic crisis in Iceland 2008. This exploration takes its starting point in personal stories that together form a mythic narrative about the crisis in which the causes of the crisis are retroactively invented through the construction of a phantasmagoria. Since the reason for the stories peculiar form – their retroactive invention of the crisis’ causes – cannot be accounted for by the stories themselves, the stories are approached a symptoms of an experience that for some reason is articulated through a myth, rather than with the language of political economy, and this despite the fact that their narrators have experienced the consequences of a collapsed economic system. This thesis attempt to trace and formulate the experience that has given the personal stories illustrated in this thesis their mythic form.

The fund industry has grown tremendously over the last decades and the function for mutual funds and their managers have gained importance. Sweden is today the greatest fund saving country in the world however the function of the mutual funds and their managers is still rather unexplored. Mutual fund managers were blamed for the recent financial crisis and their irrational behavior was highlighted. This indicated how weak the classic financial theories are when trying to explain the function of human behavior and the irrationality in the market.  Behavioral aspects for fund managers are greater than previously thought and there is a need to incorporate this better in the financial theories. The financial crisis together with the possibility of earning excess return over a long time period has indicated that the markets are not efficient. The confidence for mutual fund managers from the public is low because of the last financial crisis. There is a need for more regulation, better-suited payment schemes, greater transparency and products that everyone can understand in order to raise the confidence back to the previous level.

Although financial innovations and deregulations are often argued to be one of the main causes of the current global financial crises, there are only a few cross-country empirical evidences. Using several proxy variables for different types of innovations and regulations of a total of 132 countries, this thesis analyzes the effects of various types of financial innovations and regulations on several types of financial crisis such as currency crisis and banking crisis, for countries with different income levels. The thesis shows that financial innovation in the form of securitization has a negative effect on a country’s financial stability, while stronger regulations in the form of restrictions on bank activities and entry requirements are positively associated with the financial stability. However, judicious implementation of financial regulations is required to cope with the financial crisis because some types of regulations, if implemented simultaneously, have countervailing effects and may exacerbate the financial crisis.

This thesis studies the role of the banking system in several aspects of the macroeconomy, including the likelihood of financial crises, volatility of asset prices and the transmission of monetary policy. In chapter 2, I analyze the accumulation of international reserves by central banks as insurance against financial crises. In the model, private banks borrow from foreign creditors to invest in domestic projects. By lending to banks in response to liquidity shocks, the central bank can reduce the liquidation of bank assets and lower the probability of bank runs. I show that the central bank will hold more reserves when private banks hold lower reserves. I also find that if the central bank can borrow additional loans from external sources, then domestic banks will hold fewer reserves by themselves. If the borrowing cost of external loan is very high, then the central bank may actually want to accumulate more reserves in order to avoid borrowing from external sources at high costs. In chapter 3, I show that the ability of banks to supply liquidity through money creation is important for financial stability. By supplying liquidity, banks can smooth the sale of assets and stabilize asset prices. I find that without elastic money, the attempt of non-bank mutual funds to raise cash by selling assets will only add more volatility into the market. Elastic money provided by banks can help mutual funds better smooth the consumption of their shareholders. In chapter 4, we consider the role of elastic money in an different environment where liquidity shocks affect agents asymmetrically. We show how money growth and interest rate policy can be used to adjust the consumption level of households. We find that the optimal policy is affected by the sensitivity of the supply price to the interest rate. When the supply price is more sensitive to the interest rate, it would be better to adopt a higher inflation rate, and to make the zero-bound of nominal interest rate less likely to be binding. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2007-07-06 11:55:49.942

This study also showed how inter-connected the world is because the global financial crisis started in one part of the world but affected every country worldwide. The global financial crisis made it necessary to revisit the writings of the British economist John Maynard Keynes who is considered one of the most influential economists of the 20th century and one of the fathers of modern macroeconomics. He advocated an interventionist form of government policy, believing markets left to their own devices could be destructive, leading to cycles of recessions, depressions and booms. That is what the world witnessed during the global financial crisis. Keynes ideas helped rebuild economies after World War II, until the 1970s when his ideas were abandoned for freer market systems. What then happened was regulation began to weaken as the world economies started to recover. This scenario is likely to repeat itself even when the financial crisis is over. Market capitalism is still going to dominate the world economies because in as much as transaction will be regulated but the behaviour of finance institutions will be difficult to regulate. During the period under review, the South African financial sector and the mining industry felt the impact of the global financial crisis as shown in this study. Despite signs of a turnaround in economic activity in South Africa, financial systems are still vulnerable to risk and a renewed loss of confidence. The adverse feedback effects from the real economy, therefore, remain a concern and present new challenges for safeguarding the stability of the global financial system. The global economic crisis offers an opportunity for South Africa to act and provide long term solutions. Strict regulation should be applied not only to the financial sector but to smaller business entities as well. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2011.

The anxiety produced by the Celtic Tiger collapse created a cultural demand for cognitive frames that made the dramatically altered social circumstances and processes leading to the new economic conditions relatable. To understand the 2008 financial collapse's impact on Ireland, the nation's leading newspaper, the Irish Times, predictably employed tropes in service since the Great Depression, including human body and geological metaphors for the economic system, while rarely using metaphors such as the casino economy or the networked economy that more aptly described the level of speculation in an economic system structured by the realities of the information age. Ireland’s post-Celtic Tiger poets exemplify the reciprocity between journalistic discourse incorporating economic tropes and Irish and Northern Irish poets’ use of this discourse as a method of social critique invested in the political policy direction of their nation. Irish poetry, absorbed in a more intensive version of linguistic expression and experimentation than journalistic discourse and economic rhetoric, provides insight into the effect of economic metaphors on the socio-cultural circumstances of the nation.

This research examines the recent global financial crisis’ (GFC) impact on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and analyses governments’ responses. According to most literature, SMEs already faced obstacles prior to the GFC, such as paying high taxes, overcoming low profitability, being affected by rising business costs, finding qualified labour, dealing with increasing competition, etc. The GFC has had serious repercussions for SMEs with respect to financing, markets, and liquidity. In order to explore in depth the governments’ responses, qualitative methods are employed to test the following three research questions: 1) To what extent did governments aim to assist SMEs to survive the GFC? What types of programs have been implemented to address new and existing obstacles? 2) Did governments apply appropriate strategic initiatives to realize their goals? If the initiatives could not achieve the governments’ original goals, what obstacles did they address? 3) Did governments tend to help SMEs more after the GFC? Did governments give up on disadvantaged firms or did they try to help them survive the crisis? Analysis revealed that, as a result of the GFC, governments developed programs aimed at new obstacles and at some of the existing ones. The aims did not differ materially for developed and less-developed economies. Financing and taxation programs tended to be designed to achieve their goals directly, where other programs tended to achieve them in a more indirect manner. Overall, government initiatives covered most of the serious obstacles faced by SMEs and government assistance programs aimed at SMEs tended to have been augmented in light of the GFC.

Background: Economic and Business cycle indicators are used when predicting a country’s Gross Domestic Products, GDP. During recent time, Purchasing Managers Index and its ability to signal changes in the economy have received attention. It provides inconsistent signals since the financial crisis in 2008. Decision makers in the society rely on macroeconomic forecast when implementing strategic decisions. It is therefore necessary for indicators to provide correct signals in relation to GDP. Previous research about indicators’ stability is mostly conducted in the U.S. According to the authors’ knowledge, scarce research has been made in Sweden. The area lacks observations where a wider range of indicators is included to get a broader perspective of the economy. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine Swedish indicators and observe if they are stable and provide accurate, reliable and consistent signals in relation to GDP growth. Furthermore, the financial crisis in 2008 is used as a benchmark when observing stability and indicators’ predictive ability. Method: Ten indicators within the categories financial, survey-based and real economy indicators are selected. Quarterly data with a time period of maximum 1993-2013 are analyzed. The statistical tests conducted include Correlation, Cross-Correlation and Simple Linear Regression, an interaction term is also included to account for the financial crisis. Conclusion: The results show that nine out of ten indicators are unstable. Purchasing Managers Index show largest changes compared to other indicators. Industry Production index is the best performing indicator. When it comes to the categories; survey-based, financial and real-economy indicators, no category overall provide stability.

There is a large body of research that indicates that international equity markets co-move over time. This co-movement manifests in various instruments, ranging from equities and bonds to soft commodities. However, this co-movement is more prevalent over crisis periods and can be seen in returns and volatility transmission effects. The recent financial crisis demonstrated that no local market is immune to transmission effects from international markets. South African financial market participants, such as investors and policymakers, have a vested interest in understanding how the equity market in particular and the economy in general react to international financial crises. This study aims to contribute an improved understanding of how the South African equity market interacts with international equity markets, by identifying the degree of price and volatility transmission before, during, and after an international financial crisis. This was done by investigating the possibility of changes in price and volatility transmissions from the Asian financial crisis (1997–1998), the dotcom bubble (2000–2001) and the more recent subprime financial crisis (2007–2009). An Exponential Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (E-GARCH) model was employed within the framework of an Aggregate Shock model. The results indicate that during the international financial crises studied, the JSE All Share Index was directly affected through contagion effects inherent in the returns of the originating crisis country. Volatility transmissions during international financial crises came directly from the originating crisis country. Finally, the FTSE 100 Index was the main exporter of price and volatility transmission to the JSE All Share Index. / Thesis (M.Com. (Risk management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012