This thesis has two parts, each with a different subject. Part 1 studies the macroeconomic implications of alternative health care reforms. Part 2 studies the computation and simulation of dynamic competitive equilibria in models with heterogeneous agents and market frictions. In 2007, 44.5 million non-elderly in the U.S did not have health insurance coverage. Empirical studies suggest that there are serious negative consequences associated with uninsurance. Consequently, there is wide agreement that reforming the current health care system is desirable and several proposals have been discussed among economists and in the political arena. However, little attention has been paid to quantify the macroeconomic consequences of reforming the health insurance system in the U.S. The objective of this section is to develop a theoretical framework to evaluate a broad set of health care reform plans. I build a model that is capable of reproducing a set of key facts of health expenditure and insurance demand patterns, as well as key macroeconomic conditions of the U.S. during the last decade. Then, I use this model to derive the macroeconomic implications of alternative reforms and alternative ways of funding these reforms. The second part of this thesis studies the computation and simulation of dynamic competitive equilibria in models with heterogeneous agents and market frictions. This type of models have been of considerable interest in macroeconomics and finance to analyze the effects of various macroeconomic policies, the evolution of wealth and income distribution, and the variability of asset prices. However, there is no reliable algorithm available to compute their equilibria. We develop a theoretical framework for the computation and simulation of dynamic competitive markets economies with heterogeneous agents and market frictions. We apply these methods to some macroeconomic models and find important improvements over traditional methods.

No description available.

No description available.

Submitted by Giovanni Tondin Merlin (gtmerlin@hotmail.com) on 2018-04-26T20:30:59Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Giovanni_Merlin_PhdThesis.pdf: 2320745 bytes, checksum: 5570b1e9282fcd00b0c9bc7c8cd2f61c (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Katia Menezes de Souza (katia.menezes@fgv.br) on 2018-04-26T20:49:27Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Giovanni_Merlin_PhdThesis.pdf: 2320745 bytes, checksum: 5570b1e9282fcd00b0c9bc7c8cd2f61c (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzane Guimarães (suzane.guimaraes@fgv.br) on 2018-04-27T13:42:28Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Giovanni_Merlin_PhdThesis.pdf: 2320745 bytes, checksum: 5570b1e9282fcd00b0c9bc7c8cd2f61c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-04-27T13:42:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Giovanni_Merlin_PhdThesis.pdf: 2320745 bytes, checksum: 5570b1e9282fcd00b0c9bc7c8cd2f61c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-04-12 / This thesis is composed of three essays related to heterogeneous agent models with entrepreneurship. The first chapter adds aggregate uncertainty in a heterogeneous agent model with entrepreneurship and financial frictions, in order to evaluate the welfare effects of business cycles. The second chapter quantitatively assess the impact of The Brazilian Development Bank on the Brazilian economy, through subsidized credit supply. The third chapter uses a heterogeneous agent model to estimate effects of changes in the Brazilian tax composition on development and welfare. / Essa tese é composta por três ensaios cujo elemento em comum é a utilização de modelos de agentes heterogêneos com empreendedorismo. O primeiro capítulo adiciona incerteza agregada em um modelo de agentes heterogêneos com empreendedorismo e fricções financeiras, com o intuito de avaliar os efeitos de bem-estar dos ciclos de negócios. O segundo capítulo mensura os impactos do BNDES na economia Brasileira, através da oferta de crédito subsidiado. O terceiro capítulo utiliza um modelo de agentes heterogêneos para estimar os efeitos da composição tarifária no Brasil sobre o desenvolvimento e bem-estar.

Consumption-based asset pricing models (CCAPMs) connect asset returns with consumption growth. The poor empirical performance of early consumption models has led to the development of a number of more sophisticated models. Nevertheless, most models focus on the US markets, and very few CCAPMs have been examined in the Australian context. Given the importance of CCAPMs, the purpose of this thesis is to examine the connections between asset returns in the Australian market and consumption variables. The thesis also extends the analysis to examine CCAPMs in an international setting. There are four essays in this thesis. The first essay undertakes a thorough investigation of the empirical support for consumption-based asset pricing models in the context of several major Australian asset classes. Using the generalised method of moments (GMM) econometric approach, my study begins with the classic CCAPM originally tested by Hansen and Singleton (1982, 1983). The empirical analysis is then extended to test more-recent specifications of the CCAPM, including the habit-formation models of Abel (1990) and Campbell and Cochrane (2000), and the time nonseparable model of Epstein and Zin (1991). For each of the models examined, the results provide cautious support for the CCAPM especially in relation to equity returns. Size-sorted portfolios (in particular, portfolios of small stocks) and fixed-income returns cause the CCAPM restriction to be rejected. It also presents results that raise questions over the benefits from extensions of the classic CCAPM, such as habit-persistence and recursive utility models. The second essay studies the empirical performance of a linearised version of the classic CCAPM in the Australian market. The studies of Faff and Oliver (1998) and Faff (1998) are extended by employing more recent data and examining 25 size/BM portfolios as well as industry portfolios. It is found that by using the lagged portfolio returns, the linearised CCAPM for both industry portfolios and 25 size/BM portfolios is generally not rejected. The third essay empirically examines conditional CCAPMs where the conditioning variables are consumption factors such as the consumption-wealth ratio proposed by Lettau and Ludvigson (2001a, 2001b), the surplus consumption ratio (Campbell and Cochrane, 1999), and the labour income to consumption ratio (Santos and Veronesi, 2006). Here long-horizon return predictability tests are conducted using these factors and cross-sectional tests on whether these factors are priced using both 25 Size/BM portfolios and industry portfolios. Utilising the Fama-MacBeth (1973) procedure, it is found that conditional models perform better than unconditional models. However, these conditional models do not outperform the Fama-French three-factor model. The fourth essay tests the world CCAPMs. Using data for 17 countries, the following are tested: the classic world CCAPM under the assumption of complete international markets integration, the heterogeneous world CCAPM under the framework of Constantinides and Duffie (1996) and the world habit models. The finding here is that a large risk aversion is needed to resolve the equity premium puzzle for the classic world CCAPM; however, adding a cross-country consumption dispersion factor into the model significantly lowers the coefficients of consumption risk aversion. Unconditional linear factor models are also studied where it is found that the world consumption growth and the dispersion of the cross-sectional consumption growth provide some explanatory basis for the variation in the cross section of excess stock returns. More sophisticated consumption models perform better than the classic world CCAPM. This thesis makes a worthwhile contribution to the research literature on CCAPMs in Australia which up to now has been limited. It performs out-of-sample tests of major CCAPMs utilising several Australian asset classes. It not only provides some insights into the return predictability of the aggregate market index in Australia, but also presents some evidence of the explanation of the cross section of stock returns using consumption variables. Further, this thesis adds to the understanding of the

This thesis merges the fields of Heterogeneous Agent Models (HAMs) and Be- havioural Finance in order to bridge the main deficiencies of both approaches and to examine whether they can complement one another. Our approach suggests an alternative tool for examining HAM price dynamics and brings an original way of dealing with problematic empirical validation. First, we present the original model and discuss various extensions and attempts at empirical estimation. Next, we develop a unique benchmark dataset, covering five par- ticularly turbulent U.S. stock market periods, and reveal an interesting pattern in this data. The main body applies a numerical analysis of the HAM extended with the selected Behavioural Finance findings: herding, overconfidence, and market sentiment. Using Wolfram Mathematica we perform Monte Carlo sim- ulations of a developed algorithm. We show that the selected findings can be well modelled via the HAM and that they extend the original HAM consider- ably. Various HAM modifications lead to significantly different results and HAM is also able to partially replicate price behaviour during turbulent stock market periods. Bibliographic Record Kukačka, J. (2011): Behavioural Breaks in the Heterogeneous Agent Model. Master thesis, Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences,...