The relevance of domestic and foreign capacity utilization rates in forecasting future inflation rate has been investigated empirically, using five industrialized countries for which the comparable data are available. It has been found that capacity utilization rates, both domestic and foreign, have a long run stable relationship with domestic inflation rate and a positive shock in the capacity utilization rate results in a significant, although a little bit delayed, acceleration in the domestic inflation rate. Various econometric techniques have been used and led to consistent empirical findings. The results in the present study, therefore, dispute the claim that an increase in capacity utilization rate may not necessarily lead to an accelerated inflation down the road. / Graduation date: 1995

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Economics

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 2001. Graduate Programme in Economics. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-103). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ67897.

This thesis examines the predictive ability of models for forecasting inflation and financial market volatility. Emphasis is put on evaluation of forecasts and the usage of large data sets. Variety of models are used to forecast inflation, including diffusion indices, artificial neural networks, and traditional linear regressions. Financial market volatility is forecast using various GARCH-type and high-frequency based models. High-frequency data are also used to obtain ex-post estimates of volatility, which is then used to evaluate forecasts. All forecast are evaluated using recently proposed techniques that can account for data snooping bias, nested, and nonlinear models.

The fundamental objective of this thesis is to identify the factors responsible for the persistence of the Chilean inflation and, particularly, for the failure of the three main stabilization efforts which took place under democratic conditions in Chile, i.e. those implemented in 1956-57, 1959-61 and 1965-67. In this thesis, the Chilean inflation of 1955-1970 is considered to have been, to a large extent, the result of the failure of the political system to accommodate conflicting demands within the limits of available resources. The analysis of the literature about the Chilean inflation shows that the economic approaches fail to take socio-political factors into account, and that the literature which focuses on the non-economic aspects of the phenomenon is varied, less formalized and, in general, more concerned with the sociological aspects of the conflicts which existed in Chilean society than with the political and particularly the institutional aspects involved. This thesis attempts to overcome these shortcomings by placing the Chilean inflationary process in its specific institutional and political context. This approach shows how important the contribution of socio-political analysis can be to the understanding of inflation, particularly in historically and geographically bound case studies. The thesis concentrates considerable effort on the analysis of the connection between the cyclical pattern of the Chilean inflation, the cyclical socio-political forces at work in the Chilean society and their institutional framework. The thesis argues that under democratic conditions the inflationary propensity which existed in Chilean society had both an upper and lower limit. The analysis of the record for 1955-1970 shows that there were forces working in favour of price stabilization that became more powerful as inflation accelerated, but there were also countervailing forces favouring the continuation of inflation and these came to prevail as inflation decelerated. The cyclical character of the Chilean inflation was partly related to the cyclical pattern of the six year presidential terms which involved alternating periods of strong and centralized presidential authority and of power dispersal. The Chilean inflation was the result of a society still searching for effective forms of social regulation, alternative to the traditional ones which started to collapse in the 1920s.

No description available.

This dissertation consists of three essays in international asset pricing. The first essay develops a model where investors face barriers to foreign portfolio investment. Using the standard mean-variance framework, risk return relationships for all securities are developed. It is also shown that: (1) previous models adopting this approach are special cases of this model, and (2) all investors generally prefer complete removal of barriers over other market structures. Essay #2 empirically explores the issue of the degree of segmentation of the international capital market for risky securities. Using the 'emerging market' (EM) data base, it is shown that the international capital market is neither completely segmented nor completely integrated. Finally, the third essay investigates the relationship between stock returns and inflation for the EM securities. It is shown that stock returns are positively (negatively) related to inflation, for the group of high (low) inflation countries in the sample.

This thesis directs attention to the way in which the economics profession has sought to explain the phenomenon of inflation. The first half is primarily a detailed survey of the mainstream postwar literature in this area. The first five chapters provide a comprehensive review and a critical reappraisal of the basic theoretical contributions of successive theorists. The second half of the thesis proposes an alternative approach built essentially upon the early ideas of the neo-Wicksellian over-investment writers and upon the underlying 'structural' model found in Keynes' Treatise on Money. The problem of whether market organization affects the relationship between inflation and the structure of output and employment is also examined, and it is found to be of little importance. The Keynes-Wicksell structural model is then tested against Canadian time-series data for the period 1924-1981. Despite uneven results, the empirical findings give definite importance to the structural variable in explaining price formation in Canada. Finally, the concluding chapter discusses some of the policy issues arising from this structural approach.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Education, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-124).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Delaware, 2007. / Principal faculty advisor: James L. Butkiewicz, Dept. of Economics. Includes bibliographical references.