Déséquilibres macroéconomiques et leur résolution. / Large imbalances in both the US and within the Eurozone preceded the global financial and economic crisis of 2008-2009 (the Great Recession). Ex-post, it seems surprising that not enough attention was given to the fast rise of these imbalances -especially to the development of housing price bubbles- by economists, and even less by policy makers. A long period of relatively low macroeconomic volatility occurring between the mid-1980s to the late 2000s -the so called “Great Moderation”- along with the underestimation of the existence of bubbles in asset prices gave the impression that the large crises of the past were unlikely to reappear. Many economic commentators even saw this as a sign of the decreased relevance of the International Monetary Fund since the global financial stability seemed warranted. The policy of low inflation was viewed by most in the economics profession as more than sufficient to maintain macro stability, and the efficient market hypothesis, developed first by Eugene Fama in the 1970s, dominated the macro-models used in the academia, international organizations, and in central banks (Shiller’s best seller “Irrational Exuberance”was among one of the courageous exceptions). As a result of this inattention, the fast unwinding of these imbalances plunged in 2008-2009 the global economy in an unprecedented crisis -by many measures- since the Great Depression. The recovery from the Great Recession has been slow, with a “double-dip” recession in the Eurozone, and the prospects for a return to sustained high growth still remain uncertain.

US economic recession from 2007- 2009, also known as the Great Recession, negatively impacted the financial sector as well as other aspects of society. Researchers have found value-based measures and accounting measures as effective performance measures, but they have found inconclusive results when comparing the strengths of economic value added (EVA) and accounting measures in predicting stock performance. This study used data from the Great Recession to further compare EVA and accounting measures. The purpose of this cross-sectional or correlational study was to determine the relative predictive strength of EVA during the Great Recession to determine whether a model with EVA added to accounting measures did a better job predicting stock returns. Secondary were data collected from a sample of 93 Fortune 500 Companies from 2007-2009 and then analyzed via multivariate regression analysis. The null hypothesis was not rejected. The result showed that EVA was not a useful addition to accounting variables in predicting stock returns during the Great Recession. Although the findings did not support EVA as a better predictor of stock returns during the Great Recession, the study revealed useful information about value-based measures and value-creation, especially how they are impacted by the period of a severe economic downturn. Researchers have indicated that creating value for shareholders enables the funding of positive-net-present-value projects that would result in positive social change. This study revealed that firms are unlikely to create shareholder value through returns on investment for a positive social change in unfavorable economic conditions.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was among the first legislative responses to the financial and mortgage crises of 2008 and allowed the U.S. government to alleviate distressed financial institutions of equity and assets that were straining the housing and financial markets. However, the underlying economic events that precipitated the legislative intervention, including rising foreclosure rates in specific states, had been disproportionately affecting Americans months before the bill was signed into law. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine the parameters of the issue public that was supportive of TARP by studying how demographic and geographic disparities of the recession were related to selective exposure to news media and the formation of this issue public. The news effects theoretical perspectives of agenda setting and media priming, including attribute agenda setting and attribute priming, along with the theoretical framework of the public opinion concept of issue publics, particularly state-specific issue publics, guided and informed the execution of this research. This dissertation entailed two research approaches: a content analysis of national television news six months prior to and up until the passage of TARP in early October 2008, and a secondary analysis of select data from the 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey, a rolling cross-sectional phone survey conducted from late 2007 until Election Day 2008. Results from the content analysis study suggest national television news of the economy in 2008 predominantly covered the presidential election, the economic attributes of taxes and inflation, and presented the economic crisis as a national issue. As for the public opinion study, economic attitudes were predictive of support for TARP, but exposure to the news and demographics, including geography, were not associated with support for TARP. Overall, the unfolding recession was not frequently covered on national television news in 2008, and support for TARP was found to be associated with an individual's attitudes as opposed to demographic identity or geographic location. Findings suggest attribute agenda-setting effects were most likely for individual views of blame for the crisis, while the issue public that was supportive of TARP appeared to be based upon economic attitudes.

Pro forma EPS reporting is a fairly new accounting disclosure; it has since been modified in 2003 by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to include additional disclosure and filing requirements. This “Regulation G” has been around for nearly a decade and since that time a major financial crises in the United States has occurred. This study attempts to analyze trends in pro forma EPS reporting within the S & P 500 constituents during the Great Recession, and speculate as to whether earnings management was apparent. This study provides evidence that there was a significant increase in the proportion of pro forma disclosers and magnitudes of those disclosers. Results also indicate that the presence of negative earnings and intangibles have a significant effect on the magnitude of these differences and that there appears to be a level of consistency in pro forma reporting among firms. Results allude to the possibility of short term and long term earnings management strategies during the Great recession among S & P 500 constituents.

In the first chapter, entitled “On Cross-country Differences in the Contribution of Nontraded Goods to Real Exchange Rate Fluctuations”, The contribution of nontraded goods to Real Exchange Rate (RER) fluctuations for a large number of countries that include high, middle, and low-income countries are estimated using Engel’s (1999, JPE) approaches. We also propose a new quantity dual approach which does not require any assumption regarding the functional form for either the production function or for the overall price index to estimate similar measures. All the three approaches used yield qualitatively similar estimates, but there exists a large cross-country variation in the contributions of the nontraded goods to RER fluctuations. Income, government expenditure, exchange rate volatility, and political stability are found to be negatively correlated to the contributions of nontraded goods, while inflation, consumption expenditure, and openness are positively correlated to the contributions of nontraded goods to RER fluctuations. In the second chapter, entitled “The Great Recession and Price Convergence in the United States”, We analyze the differential nature of commodity price convergence in cities in the U.S.A. before and after the Great Recession of 2008. Using quarterly retail price data for 50 commodities from 279 cities for the period 1992- 2014, we show that the speed of price convergence for almost all the commodities increased after the great recession, and that observation is more pronounced for nonperishable prices. We also observe that the price convergence disparity between the most and the least affected states widened, with the most affected areas experiencing much higher speed of price convergence than before the Great Recession. Moreover, the geographic variations of changes in rate of convergence are noteworthy. In the third chapter, entitled “Language, Topography, and Price Convergence”, we ask what else can downgrade technological innovations, improvement of transportation infrastructures, and other policy tools in boosting integrations of commodity markets? This paper analyzes the impact of two highly exogenous variables – languages and elevations - on retail price convergence which indicates the level of market integration. Using data from a very ethnic and topographically diversified country- India- we show that language and topographical variations represent intrinsic barriers to market integration and should not be overlooked. Therefore, ceteris paribus, a country with more similarities in languages and less variation in topographical features is likely to benefit more from technological improvements and from the improvement of transportation infrastructures due to the resulting faster rate of convergence.

With more than $1.48 trillion in outstanding student loans and nearly five million Americans in default in 2017, student loans may pose one of the greatest threats to financial stability of individuals in the coming years. Failing to pay loans on time may result in wage garnishment and the suspension of Social Security payments. The second largest form of household debt, student loans are almost never dischargeable in bankruptcy and yet are critical for millions to make investments in human capital. This thesis utilizes the October 2017 addition of administrative data in the Beginning Postsecondary Students (BPS) to analyze factors influencing likelihood of student loan default in the United States up to 20 years post-enrollment. It applies logistic regression analysis to BPS 1996 and BPS 2004 and is able to trace the evolution of contributing factors over time.

The thesis analysis the primary causes of the Great Depression and Great Recession in the US. The author is looking for common signs of these crisis with special attention to monetary policy, which is considered as a crucial. The author aims to analyze economic and political measures that accompanied the crisis. The first part deals with the Fed policy including its origin, the roaring twenties, the stock Exchange crash, anti-crisis economical and political measures during the crisis and there is also written about the theoretical interpretation of the different schools of economics. The second part deals with causes of Great Recession, the government sponsored enterprises, the housing bubble or federal emergency programs. Further, it discussed the credit expansion and the Fed´s policy and in the end the author offers an comparison of both crisis and presents his own view on the issue.

Foreign direct investment has been sharply affected by the global SARS-CoV-19 pandemic, as quarantine measures have decimated global trade, aviation and domestic economies through lockdowns which have wreaked havoc on markets. Macroeconomic indicators including GDP growth rates, unemployment, business confidence, consumer confidence, retail sales and inflation have all been negatively affected due to the simultaneous supply & demand shock caused by the pandemic. Economic crises are a regularly occurring feature, with a degree of cyclicality determining their emergence. The uniqueness of crises, in their appearance and dissipation, stems from a large variance in relevant macroeconomic, fundamental and societal factors giving rise to the crisis in the first place, with the uniqueness being bound and pertinent to a selected period of time in history under which they occurred. In this thesis we explored the impact of the two most significant economic crises of the 21st century, the Great Recession and the ongoing SARS-CoV-19 pandemic and their impact on capital flows, specifically on FDI-flows in two developed markets and two emerging markets. Our findings suggest that FDI-flows display a high synchronicity with stages of economic cycles, and tend to decrease during economic recessions and increase during economic expansions.

The research concerning differences in duration of the Great Recession is limited and inconclusive. We define duration of crisis as the count of years lost due to the crisis, and estimate the determinants of crisis duration on the dataset of 54 developed and developing countries. This thesis contrasts with previous literature by employing Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to accommodate for the large amount of potential explanatory variables and to address model uncertainty. Moreover, an innovative measure of export competitiveness, which accounts for the changes in non-price factors such as quality, is used. The results bring suggestive evidence of positive impact of developed financial markets, high share of private consumption and improvements in export competitiveness. We also find positive effect of fiscal policy stimulus once it is controlled for the feedback loop of uncertainty which appears when heavily indebted countries finance fiscal stimulus through issuance of additional debt. Lastly, it needs to be concluded, that the results are not robust to all prior specifications. In particular, the more restrictive Beta binomial model prior shrinks the statistical significance of aforementioned results heavily. JEL Classification F12, F21, F23, H25, H71, H87 Keywords Great Recession, Crisis duration, Economic...

This study focuses on the debtor-creditor relationship between African states and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs). More specifically, it makes use of ‘post-positivist’ approaches as analytical tools and it compares the controversial Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) with so-called ‘post-SAPs’ in order to establish whether the latter debt relief strategies are an improvement on the former. Post-SAPs include, amongst others, the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC II) and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). Jointly, the post-SAPs initiatives aim to make debt more sustainable, boost social spending and reduce poverty. The PRSP initiative in particular was full of promise (at least initially), as it entailed that debtors would rightfully be given the scope to create their own developmental strategies and that a blanket approach to development would be abandoned. Upon closer inspection the PRSP initiative is disappointing. The process itself is predetermined and there are additional IFI mechanisms (with traditional SAPs conditionalities) that should be read alongside this initiative. As the Great Recession starting in 2007 unfolded, the IFIs tended to stress the success and ‘resilience’ of HIPC II and PRSP countries. However, this study argues that supposed achievements are somewhat artificial and one needs to remain cautious about its long-term impacts. African economies experienced high economic growth rates in recent years, not because of World Bank and IMF endorsed policies, but because of debt relief and a commodity boom in the 2000s. The IFIs have not done anything to forge the developmental state in Africa. Several HIPC II and PRSP graduates are already starting to show signs of debt distress. Thus, there is a need to seriously rethink the roles of the World Bank and IMF in Africa. This study recommends that true adherence to the PRSP approach could be a first step to empower African states, and it calls for the establishment of an independent mechanism that will hold debtors and the IFIs accountable for unsustainable debt. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Political Sciences / unrestricted