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The Ukrainian labor migration to Germany is currently a very present topic, as it is gaining more and more relevance. Statistical data show significant increases for Ukrainian workforces employed in Germany in the recent years, and further increases are expected. This bachelor thesis examines the backgrounds and framework conditions of Ukrainian labor migration to Germany, places it in context with other destination countries, and investigates the effects on the national economy and wage levels. Besides of that, different expressions of Ukrainian labor migration are presented and commodity trade relations between Ukraine and Germany are discussed. Most importantly, the thesis explores the macroeconomic causes of labor market changes and attempts to forecast, with the help of well-known theoretical models, what developments could be expected resulted by Ukrainian labor migration. Formulated hypotheses are attempted to be confirmed in an empirical analysis. For this purpose, statistical data such as average and minimum wages, migration figures, labor productivities and capital intensities were compared. The results indicate an influence of migration on growing wage levels in the Ukraine. In turn, the reduction of the available force also inhibits the labor productivity. The differentiated factor endowments ensures that Ukrainian workers are more likely to find themselves in labor-intensive economic sectors in Germany. Migration numbers are expected to increase even more if wage differentials remain at such a high level. Since the data situation is still relatively incomplete, especially with regard to the Ukrainian side, it will hopefully improve in the future and more in-depth studies to this topic will be possible.:1. Introduction 2. Theoretical Framework 2.1 Specific-Factors Model 2.1.1 Basic Concept 2.1.2 Model Extension and Application on Labor Migration 2.2 Heckscher-Ohlin Model 2.2.1 Basic Concept 2.2.2 Model Extension and Application on Labor Migration 3. Ukrainian Labor Migration to Germany 3.1 General 3.2 Meaning of Remittances and Labor Migration for the Ukrainian Labor Market 3.3 Trade between Ukraine and Germany 3.4 Different Expressions of Migration 4. Empirical Analysis 5. Conclusion Bibliography Appendix

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the macroeconomic effects of the earthquake that struck Chile in 2010 and the impact it had on the Chilean economy.  It is a narrative case study of a small, open emerging economy and the timeframe is short term. Like other studies made about macroeconomic effects of a natural disaster, it is surprising to find how fast a country can so rapidly recover from a big devastation like the Chilean earthquake 2010. The final economic impact depends on the structural conditions of the economy and the economic policy mix undertaken to handle the short-term effects. The paper shows that despite the big disaster, Chile showed great resilience to the adverse shook due to its sound finances and effective countercyclical policies.

La crise économique survenue à l’échelle mondiale en 2008 et dont les effets se font encore ressentir près d’une décennie plus tard, a mis en lumière le rôle déterminant des facteurs financiers dans les cycles économiques ainsi que dans la conduite de politiques de stabilisation conjoncturelle, au premier rang desquelles se trouve la politique monétaire. De ce point, les crises constituent une expérience privilégiée pour revoir les propriétés empiriques des modèles macroéconomiques et les aspects plus normatifs des politiques économiques. Par ailleurs, les développements observés au sein de la zone euro illustrent d’autant mieux les défis auxquels sont confrontés une union monétaire lorsque les risques financiers se mêlent aux risques de soutenabilités des dettes souveraines.La Thèse s’attachera à évaluer la conduite des politiques économiques en présence de frictions financières sous une perspective à la fois empirique, utilisant des modèles de séries temporelles multivariés, et structurelle, sur la base de modèles aux fondements théoriques plus explicites. La thèse présentera ainsi des contributions originales dans divers domaines de la macroéconomie financière.Premièrement, une série de travaux empiriques entendent démontrer la prééminence de chocs financiers dans les performances économiques européennes durant la crise. En particulier, deux articles utilisent les modèles BVAR pour identifier des chocs d’offre de crédit et quantifier leur contribution aux différentes récessions survenues dans la zone euro au cours des dix dernières années.En outre, si les chocs financiers peuvent expliquer certains faits stylisés de la crise, leur nature, leurs mécanismes de transmission et leur dimension asymétrique au sein des pays de la zone euro peuvent faire l’objet d’une analyse plus structurelle. Plusieurs travaux exposent des modèles DSGE incorporant un ensemble assez détaillé de frictions financières portant à la fois sur l’offre et la demande de crédit. Ces modèles apportent de nouvelles perspectives sur la propagation macroéconomique des chocs financiers en isolant en particulier le rôle des bilans bancaires et des schémas d’amplification entre la sphère réelle et la sphère financière.Un troisième axe de recherche se focalise sur l’évaluation des politiques monétaires. Dans le cadre de modèles DSGE présentant des propriétés empiriques satisfaisantes (et pour la plupart estimés sur des données macroéconomiques européennes), plusieurs articles analysent les caractéristiques de plusieurs concepts de politiques monétaires optimales. Ces travaux explorent la stabilisation optimale de chocs réels, nominaux ou financiers, dans des conditions d’économie ouverte ou fermée.Par la suite, la thèse s’attachera à examiner la conduite de la politique monétaire en situation de crise dans laquelle des chocs financiers ont poussé les taux d’intérêts sans risques à leur limite basse. Dans ces conditions, plusieurs articles étudient le rôle des politiques non-conventionnelles comme les achats de titres par la banque centrale ou encore, l’octroi de liquidité à long terme. Une attention toute particulière est portée sur canal du crédit de ces différentes mesures. Par ailleurs, la conduite optimale d’achat d’actifs est analysée.Enfin, les aspects normatifs de la conduite de la politique monétaire en présence de frictions financières amènent naturellement à considérer les interactions stratégiques avec d'autres politiques économiques et financières, et notamment les politiques macroprudentielles. Sur la base de modèles DSGE incluant une description pertinente du secteur bancaire, la transmission de politiques macroprudentielles peut être quantifiée ainsi que ses implications sur la politique monétaire. Les bénéfices d’une articulation efficace des politiques monétaires et macroprudentielles se trouvent d’ailleurs renforcer au sein une union monétaire, et peuvent être illustrés dans le cadre d’un modèle DSGE à deux pays. / The Thesis aims at evaluating monetary policy in presence of financial frictions both from an empirical and structural perspective. Along those lines, multi-variate time-series framework as well as model with more explicit theoretical foundations will be deployed. The Thesis presents original contributions in various fields of monetary and financial macroeconomics.The main motivation for the applied research presented in this Thesis are twofold. It responded both to the need for deeper research on macro-financial linkages and to the growing interest of policy institutions for the model-based policy advise. First, the Great recession and in particular, the typology of crisis episodes in Europe over the last decade, unveiled new challenges for monetary policy conduct, notably related to the prevalence of financial factors in cyclical fluctuations, the design of non-standard measures and the interactions with financial service policies. The second motivation has to do with the growing role for structural models in the preparation of monetary policy within central banks. Over the last decades, academic research and central bank practices have mutually benefited from strong synergies, whereby quantitative methods and theoretical advances have had a lasting influence on main preparation avenues for monetary policy making.In Chapter 1, a set of empirical studies intend to demonstrate the prevalence of financial shocks underlying the euro area macroeconomic performance during the Great recession. In particular, BVAR models can identify credit supply shocks and quantify their contribution to the various recessionary episodes over the last decade.Thereafter, Chapter 2 explores more structurally the transmission mechanism of financial shocks together with their heterogeneity across the euro area through the lens of DSGE models featuring a relevant set of demand-side as well as supply-side credit frictions.Against this background, the Thesis examine more normative aspects of monetary policy conduct starting with derivation of optimal monetary policy in selected DSGE models, which is the focus of Chapter 3. The Ramsey approach to optimal monetary provides a clear benchmark for formulating normative prescriptions. We analyse the main properties of the Ramsey allocation within a set of quantitative DSGE models, thereby bring new insight on various closed economy and open economy policy challenges.At times of crisis, as financial-driven recessions bring the monetary policy interest rates to their effective lower bound, central bank deployed a set of non-standard measures in order to engineer the intended policy accommodation. Chapter 4 presents several studies which extend DSGE models to analyse the role of non-standard monetary policy measures like asset purchase programmes or long-term liquidity operations. The credit channel of those measures will be the focus of the analysis. From a more normative standpoint, the optimal central bank asset purchase strategy will be derived.Finally, in Chapter 5, the normative assessment of monetary policy conduct in presence of financial frictions calls for considering strategic interactions with other policies, and notably macroprudential policy. Such interactions are all the more relevant when analysed in a monetary union context through multi-country DSGE models.

Abstract This thesis investigates whether stock returns can help forecast macroeconomic activity. Future earnings and dividends and current stock prices should contain information about the future state of firms and the consumption possibilities of consumers. These activities are linked to aggregate economic development and, hence, the stock markets should improve economic forecasting. We review the theoretical points that justify the importance of stock markets in economic forecasting. Recent literature on the stochastic discount factor in asset pricing and the real business cycle models has approached this connection. We try to show that the direction between financial markets and macroeconomy could be from stock markets to real economy. We empirically test the forecasting ability of stock markets with respect to macroeconomy. The unexpected part of stock return can be revealed with economic tracking portfolios (ETP), which are constructed so that the unexpected portion of the portfolio return has the maximum correlation with revisions to expectations of the target variable. ETP's track how investors revise their expectations about relevant macroeconomic variables. The results show that specific stock portfolios track future changes in macroeconomic variables well. In the previous literature, stock returns have been connected to the business cycle. This connection is analysed by explaining stock returns with total factor productivity (TFP) as a factor. TFP is measured by corporate innovation variable, i.e. the change in a firm's gross profit margin unexplained by changes in firm's capital and labour. The TFP variable performs quite nicely in explaining stock returns and it can be related to stock market momentum. Next, the aim is to investigate the forecasting power of stock returns together with the TFP factor. Even though in our results the TFP contains no information relevant for economic forecasting, the stock returns continue to perform well.

My work centers on drawing economic insights about the macroeconomy based on disaggregated mechanisms and empirical patterns. In my first chapter, I study technology upgrading in the Chinese manufacturing sector and its dynamics after trade liberalization. I first document that Chinese firms often engage in capital substitution episodes, during which firm labor productivity increases, labor shares drop, and skill intensity increases. A model in which firms adopt new skill-intensive technology through investment in capital upgrading naturally rationalizes these facts, linking capital substitution events to technological change. Empirically, trade liberalization shocks reduce capital substitution at Chinese firms, raising the possibility that trade liberalization may delay short-run growth. I then build a quantitative GE model with heterogeneous firms, capital upgrading, and trade liberalization shocks. After liberalization in the model, strategically delayed capital upgrading by firms pushes technological and consumption gains further into the future, meaningfully expanding the horizon over which trade gains manifest themselves. In the second chapter, I exploit rich data on tens of millions of housing transactions from Zillow to document poor house price growth in manufacturing-heavy regions in the US. The chapter shows that manufacturing shares strongly predict dampened house price growth, mechanically contributing to a rise in housing wealth inequality across regions. However, this price growth difference is particularly strong for lower-priced houses, amplifying inequality within regions as well. Overall, I find that cross-sectional house price inequality has increased by around 10%, with around a third of this increase due to the relative decline of lower-value homes. In the third chapter, I combine empirical tools and structural modeling to measure the effect of monetary policy on consumption through housing. Exploiting quarterly US data, I estimate empirically that a 1% unexpected interest rate shock causes average house prices to drop by about 1.4% in two years. Feeding this empirical response into an incomplete markets model, I find that aggregate consumption shifts by around 0.3% in response to the shock. A lean-against-the-wind monetary policy can stabilize consumption dynamics along a transition path.

El presente trabajo analiza el riesgo país de la economía peruana, poniendo énfasis en el efecto del precio del cobre. Se realiza una revisión de la literatura de las variables macroeconómicas y factores internacionales que influyen en el Riesgo país. Además, se estudia su relación con el precio del cobre y a los mecanismos de transmisión. En primer lugar, se analiza un modelo MCO para determinar la relación de las variables con el Embig, pero no cumple con el supuesto de homocedasticidad, debido principalmente a que la variable Embig es una variable financiera, por lo que se plantea un modelo GARCH. Los principales resultados son que el precio del cobre, el tipo de cambio, la relación entre Deuda y PBI, tienen un impacto significativo en el Embig. Las variables de cobre y liquidez en dólares poseen un efecto negativo sobre el Riesgo país. Además, el Embig, responde significativamente a la volatilidad en la actividad económica internacional, medido por los bonos americanos a vencimiento de tres meses, y el VIX. / This paper analyzes the country risk of the Peruvian economy, emphasizing the effect of the price of copper. A literature review of the macroeconomic variables and international factors that influence the country risk is made. In addition, its relation with the price of copper and the transmission mechanisms are studied. First, an MCO model is analyzed to determine the relationship of the variables with the Embig, but it does not comply with the homocedasticity assumption, mainly because the Embig variable is a financial variable, so a GARCH model is proposed. The main results are that the price of copper, the exchange rate and the relationship between Debt and GDP have a significant impact on Embig. The copper and liquidity variables in dollars have a negative effect on the Country Risk. Besides, Embig responds significantly to the volatility in the international economic activity, measured by the American bonds with a three-month maturity, and the VIX. / Trabajo de investigación

The research presented here provides a deeper assessment of the effects of economic sanctions on Iran’s economy, especially macroeconomic variables. According to the study project, the exposure of Iran’s nuclear program prompted the international community; the US, the UN, and the EU to impose severe economic sanctions on Iran. Indeed, the sanctions targeted macro variables of the economy and people in order to influence the Iranian leadership’s political conduct. So, this research aims to investigate the rationale behind and efficacy of sanctions against Iran and add a fresh viewpoint to the sanctions debate, which has typically claimed that sanctions are ineffective even though governments frequently choose to employ them. Considering the sanctions placed on Iran initially were less economic and gradually became more severe, the impact of the sanctions between 2000 and 2015 was investigated through a comparative case study of Iran. Despite disagreements concerning the effectiveness of sanctions, this paper concludes that sanctions are a far more successful instrument than military action because economic pressures and financial difficulty finally compelled Iran to return to discussions and ratify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2014.

Advertising expenditures are increasing on a yearly basis. An interesting question emerges from this: What are the macroeconomic effects of increasing advertising spending? Does the aggregate consumption increase or does it only rearrange consumption between different products and markets? The relationship between advertising and consumption was found in the literature, this relationship was further developed and the relationship between advertising and household loans emerged as an interesting subject. An econometric analysis method was used to test the relationship between the aggregated advertising expenditure and the aggregated sum of household loans, in order to investigate whether advertising spending cause changes in the use of total household loans in Sweden. The research did not conclude that aggregate advertising spending causes changes in the use of total household loans in Sweden. However, evidence was found which supports that household loans cause advertising expenditures. An implication of the findings is that the relationship between aggregated sum of household loans and advertising might be as interrelated as between advertising and consumption, and should be further researched. Another implication is that it might not be appropriate to purely look at advertising and consumption to increase the further understanding of the two variables. Introducing household loans as a funding variable to the consumption function can be seen as a new and interesting approach.