The theme of my work is the Data Mining (DM) of Macroeconomic Data. The purpose of this work is to use DM methods for analysis of macroeconomic fundamentals of selected countries of the Western Europe and the U.S.A. between years 1961-1989 and to compare the DM methods with statistical methods. For the statistical analysis, I used EViews and MS-Office Excel, for the DM I used LISp-Miner. The structure of the work is as follows: in the theoretical part I define the analysed indicators and their relations with respect to the history of analysed period. Then are specified chosen statistical methods also with the reason for choice. The last chapter of the theoretical part describes the data mining. In the practical part I describe the problems which I solved, data collecting and preparation, use of the statisitical methods and DM methods and results obtained. The enlightenment lies in conclusion. I thank my supervisor, Prof. Ing. Petr Berka, CSc. for DM meditations and important suggestions. I thank my colleagues, Ing. Vojtech Menzl, MSc and Mgr. Jana Závacká for critique of the statistical methods. I thank the living members of my family for patience.

In recent years the New Keynesian framework has become widely used to identify the relationship between monetary policy, inflation, the business cycle and welfare. Most commonly in these models inertia in prices are introduced only through the aggregate supply side which generates a short run non-neutrality of money. This thesis begins with an investigation into the impact of sticky prices on the macroeconomic equilibrium through aggregate demand. We show that in models of price stickiness among differentiated goods aggregate consumption deviates from the conventional Euler equation due to relative price distortions. This has some non-negligible implications: there are additional inflation effects, which enter through aggregate demand, that lower the response of the marginal cost and dampen responses of inflation and output; products' price elasticity of demand affects equilibrium output and inflation dynamics independently of supply factors; monetary policy responses are smoother than in the conventional new Keynesian models, particularly the more competitive are the products markets. In chapter 2 we continue with an investigation into the impact that the aforementioned channel has on welfare and monetary policy under various regimes. Specifically, we compare our results with the benchmark New Keynesian model with a cost channel for alternative levels of competition in the goods market. When the central bank is assumed to follow a Taylor rule we find, contrary to the standard New Keynesian literature, that welfare losses ultimately fall as the goods market becomes more competitive. Furthermore, there are additional adverse implications for welfare coming through an exaggerated stabilisation bias associated with discretionary policy in our model version. A move to optimal commitment implies significant additional gains compared to the standard literature by; eliminating this amplified stabilisation bias and; reducing further the fall in output gap and inflation fluctuations at the time of shock. The final part of this thesis develops a Generalised Taylor economy to include a financial market. This finance sector is characterised by savings contracts to households and loan contracts to firms, both of which are differentiated by the duration for which their interest rate remains fixed. Additionally, a time varying external finance premium on loan rates is introduced through an endogenous probability of firm default. Using break-even conditions we show that the fixed markup on loan rates is dependent on, the expected default risk over the lifetime of the contract, and, spillovers from the unexpected losses of current "locked in" financial contracts that must be accounted for in the zero profit condition of the commercial bank. Our results indicate that inertia in loan and savings rates dampens the responses of monetary policy and the business cycle whilst generating a procylical loan rate spread. In contrast, risk of default amplifies the business cycle and delivers a countercyclical loan rate spread. The overall impact of these two channels on the direction and magnitude of loan rate spreads, spillovers to new contracts and the dynamics of the business cycle, are shown depend on the type of shock hitting the economy.

This thesis represents a contribution to the literature on the relationship between decentralisation, corruption, and economic growth. This relationship is analysed both theoretically and empirically. The first chapter investigates one of the channels through which decentralisation can potentially affect corruption and economic growth. The analysis uses a dynamic general equilibrium model to gain further insights into the effects of decentralisation on the structure of corruption. The results suggest that decentralisation, by bringing the people closer to government, can enable corrupt local government officials to internalise the effects of their behaviour. It thereby generates an incentive for officials to moderate their bribe demands. This has positive effects for investment and economic growth. The second chapter examines a potential trade-off that may occur when countries embark on a program of decentralisation. On the one hand decentralisation may improve the information problems that plague overly centralised governments, but at the same time it can potentially lead to a loss of control as discretionary power is granted to local officials without implementing the required accountability mechanisms. The results of the analysis suggest that while decentralisation can potentially reduce corruption an aid economic performance in the long run, it may inevitable lead to increased corruption in the short-run. A key idea is that extra care must be taken to introducing accountability structures at the local level, but that these will likely take time before becoming effective, so that in the near term corruption may increase. In the third chapter the relationship between decentralisation, corruption and economic growth is analysed empirically, using panel data techniques. While previous studies have looked at the relationship between decentralisation and corruption, or between decentralisation and growth, or between corruption and growth, few have looked at the joint relationship between the three. Moreover, previous studies often suffer from endogeneity problems. To overcome this, the Generalised Method of Moments technique is employed; an approach that has not been used on this topic before. It is shown that, while there is evidence that corruption hampers economic growth, the effects of decentralisation are ambiguous. The chapter highlights the inherent difficulties in analysing the effects of decentralisation, which is a complex and multifaceted concept that is impossible to fully capture in the data. This suggests that empirical studies will inevitably be limited in their ability to fully assess a relationship as nuanced as this. The implication is that further investigation at the theoretical level is required. Overall, the thesis provides support for the idea that decentralisation can potentially lead to beneficial outcomes, both in terms so of combating corruption and in wider economic terms. However, it also suggest that care must be taken when implementing reforms as these beneficial outcomes a far from certain.

This dissertation presents a theoretical framework to analyze and evaluate aggregation biases. These biases measure the information lost when macro relations evaluated in terms of aggregates do not capture all of the distributional properties of micro relations. The framework is developed in the context of producer theory, but it may be used to determine the biasedness of any representative agent model and to study general relationships between exact-aggregation macro parameters and their microfoundations. The model is based on a stochastic interpretation of the production characteristics which encompasses that of previous stochastic aggregation models (Houthakker, 1955; Hildenbrand, 1981; Stoker, 1984; Lewbel, 1986a). It admits the construction of "true" aggregate relations which can be compared to pre-specifed macro relations. Many of Theil's (1954, 1971) statistical results concerning the relations between micro and macro parameters then can be formalized at the population level and generalized to non-linear functions. A moments decomposition of the "true" aggregate relation makes it possible to identify the sources and causes of potential aggregation biases. Thus, the functional-form restrictions of exact-aggregation models (Gorman, 1968a; Blackorby and Schworm, 1984, 1988) are found to be neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for consistent aggregation, if the aggregates are taken to be the usual totals or averages. Traditionally, similarity among firms, either as a maintained hypothesis or as the long-run outcome of perfect competition, has proved to ensure exact aggregation. Here, economic diversification may also provide an alternative set of circumstances under which the aggregation biases may be minimized. In the case of an average-representative firm, the output aggregation bias is explicitly derived. Empirical analyses confirm that the magnitude of the bias increases as higher moment terms in the production characteristics increase in importance. Conditions under which exact-aggregation macro parameters possess stable microdefinitions are obtained; they explain Fisher's (1971) simulation results. Empirical results show that such macro parameters are relatively stable (within the estimated confidence intervals) when based on periods of relative economic stability. Finally, theoretical implications for macroeconometric modeling and policy evaluation are explored. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

Cette thèse propose d'analyser via l'utilisation de données microéconomiques les canaux spécifiques à travers lesquels la transparence serait susceptible de promouvoir la croissance des firmes appréhendée par l'effort d'Investissement et d'alléger leurs contraintes de financement. Ce travail se donne un double objectif. Il s'agit d'abord, de construire deux scores de transparence microéconomique et macroéconomique à travers une analyse discriminante multiple portant sur un échantillon de 64 pays entre 1997 et 2009, mettant également en évidence les facteurs les plus influents sur les deux types de transparence. Ensuite, l'intégration des scores de transparence dans un modèle d'investissement basé sur l'équation d'Euler permet d'évaluer les effets respectifs des deux types de transparence sur les contraintes de financement et sur le niveau de l'investissement réel. Cette étude, portant sur un échantillon de 5652 firmes entre 2005 et 2009, fait ressortir une hiérarchisation des effets des deux types de transparence. Ces effets sont aussi plus importants pour les firmes des pays émergents. Notre étude suggère également que la transparence microéconomique et la transparence macroéconomique allègent plus les contraintes financières des firmes les moins endettées et stimulent plus l'investissement des firmes les plus endettées. Il ressort de cette recherche que les petites firmes sont plus à même de tirer profit des avantages des deux types de transparence. L'étude met en relief une non-linéarité de l'effet de la transparence microéconomique sur l'investissement et des effets de la transparence macroéconomique sur les contraintes de financement et l'investissement des firmes. / This thesis analyses the specific channels through which transparency promotes the growth of companies apprehended by investment efforts and reduces financing constrains. This work has two objectives. The first objective is to build two transparency measures, microeconomic and macroeconomic, through a multiple discriminant analysis performed on a sample of 64 countries between 1997 and 2009. This analysis put the emphasis on the factors that influences the most either the microeconomic or the macroeconomic transparency levels. Second, the Integration of the transparency measures in an Euler equation allowed to assess the effects of microeconomic and macroeconomic transparency on the financing constrains and the real investment level. This second study was based on data collected on 5652 companies between 2005 and 2009. The output is a prioritization of both kinds of transparency effects. We found that these effects are more important for emerging countries. This study also concludes that microeconomic and macroeconomic transparencies reduce financing constrains further for the firms with lower indebtedness. Transparencies stimulate investment further for the firms with higher indebtedness. This study finally highlights the non-linearity of microeconomic transparency effects on investment and also the non-linearity of macroeconomic transparency effect on financing constrains and on investment.

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We are seeing an influx of out-of-state buyers into Tennessee, and the Tri-Cities area specifically. As a major emerging housing market in the US, the Tri-Cities is being inundated by people from all states and walks of life seeking a better life in Appalachia. Although the reasons vary by person, many agree that political alignment, taxation levels, and the quietness of this area lends itself to population growth. While most members of the housing industry have noticed this uptick in out-of-state buyers, few have taken the time to analyze their own records or review the empirical evidence that is present from the past 24-36 months to see where opportunities lie. Through cooperation with a local real estate attorney, I have obtained records that have been scrubbed of personal details for academic research. Using that information I have run some tests for proportions and changes from 2020 to 2021 to determine the major hot-spot states and regions from which people are moving to Tennessee. After analyzing this data, I have then compared it to input from two real estate agents in the Tri-Cities area regarding what they believe are the largest motivating factors for these out-of-state buyers. I have concluded that the West Coast Region (and California in particular) are showing the most decisive and conclusive increases in Tennessee home buying. Overall out-of-state buyers are quickly becoming a large demographic of our market, with a statistically significant 7.56% difference in proportion from just last year to this year (2021).

This paper focuses on policies and regulations on open economies to achieve financial stability and social welfare. In the first chapter, I develop a dynamic model to study optimal liquidity regulations for multiple assets with differing levels of liquidity. I show that optimal macroprudential policies are affected by both asset liquidity and the multi-asset structure. Lower asset liquidity amplifies drops in asset prices and tightens the collateral constraint during financial crises, thus raising macroprudential taxes to discourage holding. With multiple assets, the marginal benefit of investing in one asset is affected by the future cross-price elasticities of all assets. Quantitatively, optimal macroprudential policies increases welfare by introducing a portfolio with more liquid assets and less borrowing. However, the Basel III reform deteriorates welfare, as agents overaccumulate liquid assets. In the next chapter, I focuses on the welfare analysis of currency depreciation through endogenous R&D where the economy faces a trade-off between the gain from export and disinvestment of technology. I show that real depreciation decreases welfare when productivity is endogenous, as the long-term bust due to sluggish productivity dominates the short-term boom in consumption and output. In the final chapter, I study the optimal monetary policy in this framework. The optimal policy is a targeting rule of inflation, output gap, and the terms of trade, considering the trade-off between the international purchasing power and the cost of importing R&D. The variation of the optimal monetary policy is larger than the standard Taylor rule and the optimal monetary policy under exogenous productivity.

This dissertation consists of three essays on housing and macroeconomics. The first chapter documents cross-country evidence on house prices, rental prices, and consumption volatility, especially, by focusing on comparison between emerging country group and rich country group. The second chapter develops a theoretical model framework for small open economy with housing and housing rental markets, and investigates how the model explains the empirical regularities documented in the first chapter. The third chapter discusses the excess consumption volatility observed in emerging countries using higher house price volatility in those countries through a theoretical model. In Chapter 1, I address business cycles in emerging economies exhibit both greater volatility of housing prices and relative consumption compared to business cycles in rich countries. This chapter provides evidence of a positive relationship between housing price and relative consumption volatility across countries. Furthermore, I suggest new stylized facts when housing and non-housing consumption are disaggregated: first, housing consumption is more volatile than non-housing consumption in emerging countries; and, second, even after controlling for housing consumption volatility, non-housing consumption in emerging economies is still more volatile than that in rich countries. In order to investigate the above empirical regularities, this chapter tries to figure out what is different between two country groups in terms of fundamental related to housing, by focusing on homeownership rates and housing rental market characteristics. In Chapter 2, I explore the linkage between house prices and aggregate consumption volatility by building a business cycle model of a small open economy with both housing and rental markets. While housing consumption, as measured through rental prices, is a non-negligible portion of total consumption, the role of the rental market has largely been overlooked in studies of consumption volatility. By explicitly modeling separate housing and rental sectors, this chapter is able to explain some new stylized facts suggested in the first chapter. Simulation results suggest that cross-country variation in the volatility of shocks to credit prices and availability is a driving force in generating the observed relationship between house price and relative consumption volatility. The model also suggests that a financial friction stemming from constraints in housing-collateralized credit can explain excess non-housing consumption volatility in emerging countries, while rental market frictions may account for the greater housing consumption volatility observed. In Chapter 3, I mainly discuss the causal effect of exogenous house price shock in explaining the excess consumption volatility puzzle observed in emerging countries. Specifically, first, this chapter compares the impulse responses of house price shock and income shock to show that house price is more relevant factor in understanding consumption fluctuation, and then analyses homeowners’ and renters’ behavior to figure out how the house price shock transmits to each agent’s consumption. As a result, given the highly volatile house prices in emerging economies, I show that homeowners play an essential role in amplifying the effect of house price fluctuations on consumption fluctuations through a simplified theoretical model. Therefore, this chapter argues that higher house price volatility in emerging countries leads to their excess consumption volatility.

This dissertation is a collection of three essays on the monetary and fiscal stabilization policies. Grounded in the framework of the New Keynesian model, they combine both theoretical modeling and quantitative analysis, taking into account the considerations from behavioral macroeconomics and global supply chains. Chapter 1 considers both short-term effects and long-run consequences of alternative monetary and fiscal policies under an assumption of bounded rationality. Most of the existing analyses of the interaction between monetary and fiscal policy in the monetary literature often turn crucially on assumptions that are made about outcomes far in the future, sometimes infinitely far. This is a problematic feature of rational-expectations analyses, given the limited basis for assumptions about the distant future. By relaxing this problematic assumption regarding long-expectation, while keeping other parts as close as possible to the standard New Keynesian model, I take the approach of finite forward planning to study the interplay of fiscal transfer policies and monetary policy. In particular, this approach assumes that explicit forward planning extends only a finite distance into the future, with anticipated situations at that horizon evaluated using a value function learned from past experience. Such an approach makes announcements of future policies relevant, but avoids the debates about equilibrium selection that plague rational-expectations analyses. The combined monetary-fiscal regimes that result in stable long-run dynamics are characterized, and the effectiveness of temporary changes in either type of policy as a source of short-run demand stimulus is analyzed. The effectiveness of a coordinated change in monetary and fiscal policy is shown to be greatest when decision makers' degree of foresight is intermediate in range (average planning horizons on the order of ten years), rather than shorter or longer. Chapter 2, co-authored with Michael Woodford, reconsiders several issues connected with stabilization policy, when the zero lower bound (ZLB) is a relevant constraint on the effectiveness of conventional monetary policy, under an assumption of bounded rationality. In particular, it assumes that decision makers only plan a finite distance into the future each time they must act, and use a value function from their past experiences to estimate a continuation value for their situation at the end of the planning horizon. Forward guidance regarding future monetary policy remains relevant, even if its predicted impact is quantitatively weaker, and in particular price-level targeting continues to have advantages over purely forward-looking inflation targeting during a ZLB scenario. Moreover, recognizing that planning horizons may be relatively short for some strengthens the case for systematic price-level targeting, as opposed to temporary price-level targeting only following a ZLB scenario. Fiscal transfers can be a powerful tool to reduce the contractionary impact of an increased financial wedge during a crisis, and even make possible complete stabilization of both aggregate output and inflation under certain circumstances, but the power of such policies depends on the degree of monetary policy accommodation. We also show that a higher level of welfare is generally possible if both monetary and fiscal authorities commit themselves to history-dependent policies in the period after the financial disturbance has dissipated. Chapter 3, co-authored with Shang-Jin Wei, studies the implications of global supply chains for the design of monetary policy, using a small-open economy New Keynesian model with multiple stages of production. Within the family of simple monetary policy rules with commitment, a rule that targets separate producer price inflation at different production stages, in addition to the output gap and real exchange rate, is found to deliver a higher welfare level than alternative policy rules. As an economy becomes more open, measured by the export share, the optimal weight on the upstream inflation rises relative to that on the final stage inflation. If we have to choose among aggregate price indicators, targeting PPI inflation yields a smaller welfare loss than targeting CPI inflation alone. As the production chain becomes longer, the optimal weight on PPI inflation in the policy rule that targets both PPI and CPI inflation will also rise. A trade cost shock such as a rise in the import tariff can alter the optimal weights on different inflation variables.