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Dans cette thèse, je fournis une évaluation empirique des relations entre les principales variables macroéconomiques qui animent le cycle économique. Nous traitons dans chacun des trois chapitres une question empirique en utilisant une approche économétrique bayésienne. Dans le premier chapitre nous étudions la contribution conditionnelle des taux de transition du marché du travail (le taux de retour en emploi et le taux de séparation). La littérature n'est pas parvenue à un consensus sur lequel des taux dominent la dynamique du marché du travail. Alors que Blanchard et Diamond (1990) ont conclu que la baisse de l'emploi en période de récession résulte d'un taux de séparation plus élevé, Shimer (2012), ainsi que Hall (2005), expliquent que les variations du chômage sont principalement expliqués par la variation du taux de retour en emploi. Notre résultat, obtenu grâce à une estimation d'un modèle VAR structurel, montre que l'importance de chaque taux de transition dépend des chocs qui ont frappé le marché du travail et de l'importance des institutions du marché du travail. Dans le second chapitre, nous évaluons l'impact de la réforme du marché du travail réalisée par le Président des États-Unis H. Hoover au début de la Grande Dépression. Nous montrons que ces politiques ont permis à l'économie américaine d'échapper à une grande spirale déflationniste. L'estimation d'un modèle DSGE à l'échelle agrégée, nous permet de comparer deux effets opposés que ces politiques impliquent : effet négatif dû à une baisse de l'emploi et l'effet positif dû aux anticipations inflationnistes qui sont expansionnistes quand l'économie est dans la trappe à liquidité. Les résultats dépendent de la règle de politique monétaire que nous supposons : le principe de Taylor ou le ciblage du niveau de prix. Le troisième chapitre est consacré à la relation entre le taux d'intérêt réel et l'activité économique qui dépend du nombre des participants aux marchés financiers. En utilisant un modèle DSGE et en permettant à la proportion de ces agents d'être stochastiques en suivant une chaîne de Markov, nous identifions les périodes historiques où la proportion était assez faible pour inverser la courbe IS. Pour le cas des États-Unis, nous montrons que cette relation est positive pendant la période de la Grande Inflation et pendant une courte période au début de la Grande Récession. Dans l'union européenne, la proportion de non­-participants a été augmentée pendant les années 2009-2015 mais seulement pour amplifier la corrélation négative entre le taux d'intérêt réel et la croissance de la production. / In this thesis I provide an empirical assessment of the relations between the main macroeconomic variables that drive the Business Cycle. We treat the empirical question that arises in each chapter using Bayesian estimation. In the first chapter we investigate conditional contribution of the labor market transition rates (the job finding rate and the separation rate) to unemployment. The literature did not have a consensus on which rate dominates in explaining the labor market dynamics. While Blanchard and Diamond (1990) concluded that the fall in employment during slumps resulted from a higher separation rate, Shimer (2012), as well as Hall (2005), explain unemployment variations by mainly the job finding rate. Our result, obtained through an estimation of a structural VAR model, shows that the importance of the transition rated depends on the shocks that hit an economy and hence the importance of the labor market institutions. In the second chapter, we assess the impact of the labor market reform of the US president H. Hoover implemented at the beginning of the Great Depression. We show that these policies prevented the US economy to enter a big deflationary spiral. Estimating a medium scale DSGE model, we also compare two opposite effects these policies lead to: negative effect through a fall in employment and positive effect though inflationary expectations which are expansionary when monetary policy is irresponsive to the rise in prices. The results depend on the monetary policy rule we assume: The Taylor principle or price level targeting. The third chapter is devoted to the relation between the real interest rate and the economic activity which depends on the number of asset market participants. Using a DSGE model and allowing to the proportion of these agents to be stochastic and to follow a Markov chain, we identify the historical sub-periods where this proportion was low enough to reverse the IS curve. For the US case, we report the studied relation to be positive during the Great Inflation period and for a short period at the edge of the Great Recession. In the EA, the proportion of non-participants has been increased during 2009-2015, but only to amplify the negative correlation between the real interest rate and output growth.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Race and politics have played an important part in shaping the history of the United States, from the first arrival of African slaves in the early seventeenth century to the election of an African-American president in 2008. The Great Depression and the New Deal represent a period that was no exception to the influence of race and politics. After Franklin Roosevelt succeeded Herbert Hoover to the American presidency, there was much faith and hope expressed on the editorial pages of the Indianapolis Recorder that African Americans would be treated fairly under the New Deal. Hope began to wane when little political patronage was dispensed, in the form of government jobs, once the Democrats took office in 1933. As the first incarnation of the New Deal progressed, African Americans continued to experience prejudice, segregation, unfair wages, and generally a “raw deal.” But what was more, African-American women and men were not given a fair opportunity to ensure for themselves better political, social, and economic standing in the future. This struggle for full-fledged citizenship was further underscored when Congress failed to pass anti-lynching legislation in 1934 and 1935. The New Dealers, Franklin Roosevelt chief among them, did not seize the opportunity presented by the Great Depression to push for civil rights and social justice for African Americans. Their intent was not necessarily malicious. A more nuanced view of the issues shows that political expedience, and a measure of indifference, led the New Dealers to not treat civil rights as the pressing issue that it was. Roosevelt and the New Dealers believed that they faced the potential for significant resistance to their economic recovery program from Southern Democrats on Capitol Hill if they tried to interfere with race relations in the South. This thesis examines the first years of the Roosevelt Administration, roughly 1933 through 1936. This timeframe was carefully chosen because it was a period when the issues surrounding race and racism were brought to the fore. In the initial period of the New Deal we can see how Roosevelt met and failed to meet the expectations of African Americans. The prevailing view among the African American leadership in 1935, argued Harvard Sitkoff, was that the federal government had “betrayed [African Americans] under the New Deal.” Sitkoff referred to these “denunciations of the New Deal by blacks” as commonplace from 1933 to 1935. But beginning with the Second New Deal in the middle 1930s the criticism turned to applause.

The following thesis is a study of how communities of Washington County, Utah developed within one of the most inhospitable deserts of the American West. A trend of reliance on public works programs during economic depressions, not only put people to work, but also provided an influx of outside aid to develop an infrastructure for future economic stability and growth. Each of these public works was carefully planned by leaders who not only saw the immediate impact these projects would have, but also future benefits they would confer. These communities also became dependent on acquiring outside investment capital from the Mormon Church, private companies and government agencies. This dependency required residents to cooperate not only with each other, but with these outside interests who now had a stake in the county's development. The construction of the Mormon Tabernacle and Temple in St. George during the 1870s made that community an important religious and cultural hub for the entire region. Large-scale irrigation and reclamation projects in the 1890s opened up new areas for agriculture and settlement. And in the 1920s and 1930s the development of Zion National Park and the construction of roads provided the infrastructure for one of the county's most important industries, tourism. Long after these projects' completion they still provided economic and cultural value to the communities they served. Some of these projects provided the infrastructural foundation that allowed Washington County communities to have greater security and control over their economic future. Over time the communities of southern Utah created dramatic reenactments and erected monuments of these very projects to celebrate and preserve the story of their construction. During the first decade of the twenty-first century Washington County has become one of the fastest growing areas in the country, and as a result public works programs continue to be important to support this growth.

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The Colored Trainmen of America (CTA) actively challenged Jim Crow policies on the job and in the public sphere between the 1930s and 1950s. In response to lingering questions concerning the relationship between early black labor activism and civil rights protest, this study goes beyond both local lure and cursory research. This study examines the Colored Trainmen's major contributions to the advancement of African Americans. It also provides context for some of the organization's shortcomings in both realms. On the job the African American railroad workers belonging to the CTA fought valiantly to receive the same opportunities for professional growth and development as whites working in the operating trades of the railroad industry. In the public sphere, these men collectively protested second-class services and accommodations both on and off the clock. Neither their agenda, the scope of their activities, nor their influence was limited to the railroad lines the members of the CTA operated within the Gulf Coast region. The CTA belonged to a progressive coalition comprised of four other powerful independent African American labor unions committed to unyielding labor activism and the toppling of Jim Crow. Together, they all worked to effectuate meaningful social change in partnership with national civil rights attorney Charles H. Houston. Houston's experience and direction, coupled with the CTA's dedicated membership and willingness to challenge authority, created considerable momentum in movements aimed at toppling racial inequality in the workplace and elsewhere. Like most of their predecessors, the CTA's struggle for advancement fits within a continuum of successive challenges to economic exploitation and racial inequality. No single person or organization can take full credit for ending segregation or achieving equality. Many who remain nameless and faceless contributed and sacrificed. This study not only chronicles the contribution of a relatively unsung African American labor organization that waged war against Jim Crow on two different fronts, it also pays homage to a few more individuals who made a difference in the lives of an entire race of people during the course of a bitterly contested, never-ending struggle for racial equality in the United States of America during the twentieth century.

The aim of this thesis is to enhance our understanding of Swedish marine insurers' choices of business strategies under the potentially difficult business circumstances of the interwar period 1918-1939. Little previous research exists on marine insurance during the interwar period. This is remarkable in the Swedish context since the Swedish economy has traditionally depended on its exports. The focus on Sweden is justified since the Swedish insurance market saw regulatory stability during the interwar period. It was also characterised by the coexistence of stock and mutual insurers, allowing this thesis to contribute with insights on potentially problematic insurance cartelisaton. This thesis employs a mixed methods design, including qualitative methods and regression analysis. To interpret results, this thesis employs insurance risk theory, cartel theory, theories on reinsurance and risk diversification, and agency theory. By employing this combination of theories, it is possible to explain choices and outcomes of adopted strategies both with reference to particularities of marine insurance and with reference to particularities of the two different organisational forms. The results show that the insurers conceived several new characteristics of their business environment as challenges and implemented both cartel strategies and company-specific strategies of risk diversification. Among the challenges were rapid inflation, rapidly decreasing prices and business volumes in shipping and trade, the introduction of motor ships, and the existence of naval mines on many trade routes. Also, exchange-rate fluctuations were considered to cause losses on established marine insurance contracts and rendered business results uncertain. Swedish insurers adopted cartel strategies from 1918 through The Swedish Association of Marine Underwriters (Sjöassuradörernas Förening) since they had anticipated a post-war crisis. Market division agreements were adopted for the most attractive market segments, but eventually price agreements became the primary cartel strategy, supported by prohibitions of competition. The work on price agreements sometimes increased the market efficiency since it reduced uncertainty, for instance in insurance of cargo with motor ships. Few price agreements were however adopted for the insurance of shipping since that market segment was dominated by mutual insurers, highlighting the difficulties of cartelisation in insurance markets inhabited by both stock and mutual insurers. The cartel further adopted reinsurance agreements to create barriers to entry in the Swedish marine insurance market. It however experienced prominent difficulties to implement the cartel strategies. One prominent difficulty of implementation was cheating. Also international competition created difficulties. The cartel companies therefore engaged in international cartelisation through The International Union of Marine Insurance (Internationaler Tranport-Versicherungs-Verband) from the late 1920s. This international cartel sought to reduce international competition by agreements not to compete in foreign markets. It also sought to manage the exchange-rate fluctuations of the early 1920s and the early 1930s by agreements among marine insurers, but it failed to obtain sufficient support. In spite of cartelisation, the returns on marine insurance were pushed down by the recognized challenges during the early 1920s, inflicting losses. The business however recovered and remained profitable throughout the 1930s, showing that the great depression was not as great as the deflation crisis in marine insurance. Exchange-rate fluctuations affected the international competitive strength of both stock and mutual insurers and additionally influenced the stock insurers' returns on established marine insurance contracts. The insurers were however compensated for the poor marine business results of the early 1920s by greater reliance than previously on reinsurers and by diversification among insurance lines, which rendered profits less negative than the returns on marine insurance. The business ceded to reinsurers on average inflicted losses during each of the first seven years of the 1920s. These losses were indirectly caused by World War I since that war had caused the establishment of new reinsurers in different countries, not the least in Scandinavia, and in turn caused over capacity during the 1920s. New contractual formulations evolved internationally to the benefit of ceding insurers, indicating information asymmetries. Exits became frequent among reinsurers. In effect, into the 1930s, ceding insurers internationally found it difficult to obtain obligatory reinsurance treaties. During the early 1920s, the Swedish stock marine insurers also increasingly diversified their insurance businesses among insurance lines. This process had been catalysed by World War I, was accelerated during the 1920s, and continued into the 1930s. / Syftet med denna avhandling är att förståeliggöra svenska marinförsäkringsbolags val av affärsstrategier under mellankrigstiden 1918-1939, en period som kännetecknades av potentiellt svåra affärsförhållanden. Försäkringsverksamhet är känslig för ekonomiska kriser, men har uppmärksammats mindre än bankverksamhet när det gäller mellankrigstiden. Inte minst marinförsäkring är känslig för ekonomiska kriser eftersom de försäkrade verksamheterna, sjöfart och handel, endast förekommer i den mån som transporterade varor efterfrågas. Tidigare forskning har endast i liten omfattning fokuserat på marinförsäkring, vilket ur ett svenskt perspektiv kan tyckas anmärkningsvärt med tanke på att den svenska ekonomin har i hög grad varit beroende av sjöburen handel. En studie av svensk marinförsäkring är motiverad ur ett internationellt perspektiv eftersom den svenska försäkringslagstiftningen förblev i stort sett oförändrad under perioden, vilket gör det rimligt att tolka marinförsäkringsbolags val av affärsstrategier som svar på ekonomiska omständigheter. Under mellankrigstiden var katellstrategier ett vanligt svar på svåra affärsförhållanden i olika verksamheter, men kartellisering var potentiellt problematisk i marinförsäkring eftersom den verksamheten är internationell och eftersom marinförsäkring är en heterogen produkt. Dessutom befolkades den svenska försäkringsmarknaden av både aktiebolag och ömsesidiga bolag, vilket är ett ytterligare potentiellt hinder för kartellisering. Studier av kartellisering under potentiallt svåra förutsättningar kan bidra med insikter om under vilka förutsättningar karteller uppstår, vilket ytterligare motiverar studien. Denna avhandling analyserar även två företagsspecifika riskdiversifieringsstrategier, som potentiellt kan kompensera för låg avkastning på mottagen försäkring, nämligen återförsäkring och diversifiering mellan försäkringsgrenar. Återförsäkring har av tidigare forskning framhållits som ett underutforskat område. Avhandlingen tillämpar både kvalitativa och kvantitativa undersökningsmetoder. För att uttolka de empiriska resultaten tillämpas riskteori för försäkring, kartellteori, återförsäkringsteori, riskdiversifieringsteori, samt incitamentsteori på företagsnivå (agency theory). Denna kombination av teorier gör det möjligt att förklara strategival med utgångspunkt både i marinförsäkringens karaktäristika och i de båda olika organisationsformers karaktäristika. Resultaten visar att försäkringsbolagen noterade ett antal nya affärsförhållanden som utmaningar och att dessa bolag implementerade både kartellstrategier och företagsspecifika riskdiversifieringsstrategier. Bland de noterade utmaningarna märks snabb inflation, snabbt fallande priser och affärsvolymer i sjöfart och handel, införandet av motorfartyg, samt sjöminor på många fartygsrutter. Försäkringsbolagen behärskade endast lite erfarenhet av risker associerade med motorfartyg och sjöminor, vilket gjorde riskbedömningar osäkra. Även växelkursfluktuationer uppfattades som utmaningar eftersom de orsakade förluster på etablerade marinförsäkringskontrakt och skapade problem att förutsäga affärsresultaten. Från 1918 antog svenska marinförsäkringsbolag kartellstrategier genom branschorganisationen Sjöassuradörernas Förening, detta eftersom de förväntade sig en efterkrigskris. Marknadsuppdelningsavtal infördes i attraktiva marknadssegment, men med tiden blev prisöverenskommelser den främsta kartellstrategin, understödd av avtal som förbjöd konkurrens. Arbetet med prisöverenskommelser ökade marknadseffektiviteten i vissa marknadssegment, detta genom att reducera osäkerheten i riskbedömningarna. Ett tydligt exempel på ett sådant marknadssegment är försäkring av varor transporterade med motorfartyg. Kartellen etablerade däremot få prisöverenskommelser för försäkring av sjöfart eftersom detta marknadssegment dominerades av ömsesidiga försäkringsbolag. Denna kontrast mellan varuförsäkring och sjöfartsförsäkring belyser svårigheterna med att kartellisera en försäkringsmarknad som befolkas både av aktiebolag och av ömsesidiga bolag. Kartellen antog också återförsäkringsavtal i syfte att skapa etableringshinder på den svenska försäkringsmarknaden. Den upplevde emellertid svårigheter att implementera överenskommelserna, såsom brott mot prisöverenskommelserna och mot konkurrensförbuden. Ytterligare svårigheter skapades av internationell konkurrens. Från slutet av 1920-talet deltog därför kartellbolagen i den internationella marinförsäkringskartellen Internationaler Tranport-Versicherungs-Verband (senare benämnd The International Union of Marine Insurance). Medlemsbolagen i denna internationella kartell skapade överenskommelser med innebörden att utländska försäkringstagare inte skulle erbjudas försäkring. Dessa överenskommelser syftade till att reducera den internationella konkurrensen. Denna kartell försökte också reducera effekterna för marinförsäkringsbolag av växelkursfluktuationer genom överenskommelser om hur växelkurser skulle beräknas i marinförsäkringsfrågor. Sådana försök gjordes både under de första åren av 1920-talet och under de första åren av 1930-talet. Det avsedda resultatet kunde emellertid inte nås, detta eftersom uppslutningen förblev otillräcklig. Trots kartelliseringen reducerades avkastningen på marinförsäkring till förlustnivåer under det tidiga 1920-talet. Avkastningen förbättrades sedan stegvis och förblev positiv under 1930-talet. I marinförsäkring var alltså den stora depression inte lika stor som deflationskrisen. Växelkursfluktuationer påverkade både aktiebolags och ömsesidiga bolags internationella konkurrenskraft. Dessutom påverkade växelkurserna aktiebolagens avkastning på etablerade marinförsäkringskontrakt. Försäkringsbolagen kompenserades för 1920-talets förlustresultat i marinförsäkring genom ökad cedering av risk till återförsäkringsbolag och genom diversifiering av de mottagna riskerna mellan olika försäkringsgrenar. Under 1920-talet var bolagens vinster därför mindre negativa än resultaten i marinförsäkring. Den affär som cederades till återförsäkringsbolag var i genomsnitt förlustbringande under vart och ett av 1920-talets första sju år. Dessa förluster orsakades indirekt av första världskriget, eftersom det kriget stimulerade etablering av nya återförsäkringsbolag, detta i olika länder och inte minst i Skandinavien. I förlängningen skapade första världskriget därmed överkapacitet på återförsäkringsmarknaden. Nya kontraktsformuleringar introducerades internationellt till de cederande bolagens fördel. Detta förhållande indikerar informationsasymmetrier i relationen mellan cederande och mottagande försäkringsbolag. Många återförsäkringsbolag lämnade marknaden. Resultatet blev att cederande bolag under början av 1930-talet i olika länder fick svårigheter att sluta obligatoriska återförsäkringsavtal. Under början av 1920-talet diversifierade aktiebolagen också sin verksamhet mellan olika försäkringsgrenar. Denna process katalyserades av första världskriget, accelererade under början av 1920-talet och fortsatte in på 1930-talet.