Thesis advisor: Ronnie Sadka / This dissertation is comprised of three essays which examine the ramifications of executive compensation incentive structures on corporate outcomes. In the first essay, I present evidence which suggests that executive compensation convexity, measured as the sensitivity of managerial equity compensation portfolios to stock volatility, predicts firm-specific crashes. I find that a bottom-to-top decile change in compensation convexity results in a 21% increase in a firm's unconditional ex-post idiosyncratic crash risk. In contrast, I do not find robust evidence of a symmetric relation between compensation convexity and a firm's idiosyncratic positive jump risk. Finally, I exploit exogenous variation in compensation convexity, arising from a change in the expensing treatment of executive stock options, in buttressing my interpretations within a natural experiment setting. My results suggest that managerial equity compensation portfolios do not augment a firm's future idiosyncratic crash risk because they link managerial wealth to equity prices, but rather because they tie managerial wealth to the volatility of a firm's equity. In the second essay, I exploit an exogenous negative shock to CEO compensation convexity in examining the differential ramifications of option pay and risk-taking incentives on the systematic and idiosyncratic volatility of the firm. I find new evidence that is largely consistent with the notion that compensation convexity, stemming from option convexity, predominantly incentivizes under-diversified risk-averse CEOs to increase the value of their option portfolios by increasing the systematic volatility of the firms they manage. I hypothesize that this effect manifests as systematic volatility is readily more hedgeable than idiosyncratic volatility from the perspective of risk-averse executives who are overexposed to the idiosyncratic risk of their firms. If managers use options as a conduit through which they can gamble with shareholder wealth by overexposing them to suboptimal systematic volatility, options are not serving their intended contracting function. Instead of decreasing agency costs of risk, by encouraging CEOs to adopt innovative positive NPV projects that may be primarily characterized by idiosyncratic risk, option pay may have contributed to the same frictions it was intended to reduce. In the third essay, I present evidence that is consistent with the notion that certain managerial debt-like remuneration structures decrease the likelihood of firm-specific positive stock-price jumps. Namely, I find that a bottom-to-top decile increase in the present value of CEO pension pay leads to a roughly 25\% decrease in a firm's unconditional ex-post jump probability. However, I do not find that CEO deferred compensation decreases firm jump risk. Finally, I find that information in option-implied volatility smirks does not appear to reflect these dynamics. Together, these results suggest that not all debt-like compensation mechanisms decrease managerial risk-taking equally. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

Thesis advisor: Peter Gottschalk / Thesis advisor: Shannon Seitz / This dissertation contains two essays in labor economics. It provides a descriptive analysis on income volatility and develops a microeconomic model to study how married couples make joint decisions in response to such income volatility. The first essay examines the recent trends in household income volatility in the United States, West Germany and Great Britain, and compares household income volatility with individual income volatility. I estimate a formal error components model using the Cross-national Equivalence File from 1979 to 2004. I find that household income volatility, measured by the transitory variance of household income, accounts for more than half of the total income variance for all three countries. Despite the differences in the total household income variances among the three countries, the permanent variances converges since the late 1990s. The household earnings volatility is always lower than the individual earnings volatility for married couples, which suggests some evidence of intra-household insurance. In the second essay I examine whether married couples make joint labor supply decisions in response to each other's wage shocks. The study of this question aids in understanding the link between the recent rise in earnings volatility and household joint decisions. I develop an intra-household insurance model based on the collective framework, which allows for insurance against both permanent and transitory wage shocks from both partners. Estimation using Survey of Income and Program Participation shows that individuals increase labor supply in response to spouse's adverse wage shocks and such labor supply responses are larger when shocks are permanent than transitory. A household makes less transfer to the individual with more volatile income, which can be considered as a price for insurance.This intra-household insurance reduces earnings volatility by about 1.2% to 7.7%. These results suggest that joint labor supply decisions provide a smoothing effect on shocks to earnings and household income. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Thesis advisor: Christopher Baum / Thesis advisor: Fabio Ghironi / Do events in the natural gas market cause repercussions in the crude oil market? In light of the enormous impact that price movements in the two largest U.S. energy markets have on the economy, it is important to understand not just the individual markets but also how they relate to one another. On this front, the literature presents a puzzle: while economic theory suggests that the oil and gas markets are interlinked through a bi-directional causal relationship, empirical research has concluded that the oil market affects the gas market but not vice versa. The first chapter of this dissertation improves on the previous studies in two ways: by using high-frequency, intraday oil and gas futures prices and by analyzing the effect of specific news announcements from the weekly oil and gas inventory reports. The results dispel the notion of one-way causality and provide support for the theory. The reaction of the futures volatility and returns is asymmetric, although this asymmetry does not follow the "good news" vs. "bad news" pattern from stock and bond markets; the response depends on whether the shock is driven by oil or gas inventory gluts or shortages. The two-way causality holds not only for the nearby futures contract but also for contracts of longer maturities. These findings underscore the importance of analyzing financial markets in a multi-market context. The second chapter of this dissertation asks whether volatility and trading volume evolve in a unidirectional or bidirectional, contemporaneous or lagged relationship in the crude oil and natural gas futures markets. This question is important because it affects trading and government regulation but previous studies have come to conflicting conclusions. Their main shortcoming is the low frequency of data used in the analysis. This chapter improves on the previous studies in three ways: by using high-frequency, intraday oil and gas futures prices and volume, by including trading not only during the day but also during the night, and by analyzing not only the nearby futures contract but also contracts with longer maturities. For the nearby contract, Granger-causality tests show that past values of volume help explain volatility which agrees with the Sequential Information Arrival Hypothesis. Past values of volatility have explanatory power for volume only when absolute return is used as the volatility measure; when the conditional variance from GARCH models is used as the volatility measure, the causality in this direction disappears. These results change when low-frequency daily data is applied. It is also shown that the volatility-volume relationship differs for contracts with longer maturities. These findings are relevant for regulations, such as trader position limits recently adopted by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trade Commission. The third chapter of this dissertation investigates whether the production structure of firms affects international optimal portfolios, risk-sharing, and response of terms of trade (TOT) to shocks. The answer to this question would enhance our understanding of the home equity bias, yet it has not been addressed in the theoretical literature. This chapter studies the question in a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with endogenous portfolio allocation. It shows that the optimal portfolio includes more home equity as the production structure changes from exporter-only, i.e., firms operating in their home countries and serving foreign markets by exports, to multi-national-company-extreme (MNC), i.e., firms hiring labor in both countries and producing locally in both countries. This shift occurs because changing the firms' production structure eliminates exposure to technology differences and allows the home household to accomplish the same diversification with less foreign equity. The production structure also has implications for the effect of technology shocks on the TOT. Under the exporter-only setup, a shock to technology causes a standard TOT deterioration, whereas under the MNC-extreme setup, a shock to technology leads to a TOT improvement. By producing testable predictions, this chapter underscores the need to take firms' production structure into account when analyzing international optimal portfolios, risk sharing, and response of the TOT to technology shocks. This is especially important since empirical research has generated conflicting results. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Thesis advisor: Susanto Basu / The goal of this dissertation is to shed some light on three separate aspects of the financial system that can lead to greater instability in the banking sector and greater macroeconomic volatility. The starting point of the Great Recession was the collapse of the banking sector in late 2007; in the subsequent months, liquidity evaporated in many markets for short term funding. The process of creating liquidity carried out by the banking system involves the transformation of long term illiquid assets into short term liquid liabilities. This engine functions properly as long as cash lenders continue to roll over short term funding to banks; whenever these lenders fear that banks will not be able to pay back these obligations, they immediately stop funding banks' short term liabilities. This makes banks unable to repay maturing short term debt, which leads to large spikes in default risk. This is often referred to as a modern bank run. Virtually all the theories of bank runs suggest that the severity of a run depends on how well lenders can coordinate their beliefs: whenever a lender expects many others to run, he becomes more likely to run as well. In a joint work with Emanuele Brancati, the first chapter of my dissertation, we empirically document the role of coordination in explaining bank runs and default risk. We establish two new results. First, when information is more precise and agents can better coordinate their actions, a change in market expectations has a larger impact on default risk; this implies that more precise information increases the vulnerability or instability of the banking system. This result has a clear policy implication: if policymakers want to stabilize the banking system they should promote opacity instead of transparency, especially during periods of financial turmoil. Second, we show that when a bank is expected to perform poorly, lower dispersion of beliefs actually increases default risk; this result is in contrast with standard theories in finance and can be rationalized by thinking about the impact that more precise information has on the ability of creditors to coordinate on a bank run. Another aspect of the banking system that is creating a lot of instability in Europe is the so called "disastrous banks-sovereign nexus": many banks in troubled countries owned a disproportionately large amount of domestic sovereign bonds; therefore, in case of a default of the sovereign country, the whole domestic banking sector would incur insurmountable losses. This behavior is puzzling because these banks in troubled countries would greatly benefit from having a more diversified asset portfolio, but instead decide to load up with domestic sovereign debt only. In a joint work with Filippo De Marco, the second chapter of my dissertation, we show that banks receive political pressures from their respective governments to load up on domestic sovereigns. First, we show that banks with a larger fraction of politicians as shareholders display greater home bias. More importantly, we exploit the fact that low-performing banks received liquidity injections by their domestic governments to show that, among those banks, only the "political banks" drastically increased their home bias upon receiving government help. Furthermore, it appears that the extent of political pressure on banks is much stronger on those "political banks" belonging to troubled countries. These findings suggest that troubled countries that would need to pay a high premium to issue new debt force their "political banks" to purchase part of the debt issuance. This greater risk-synchronization can create a dangerous loop of higher sovereign default risk leading to insolvency of the domestic banking system, which in turn would require a bail-out from the local government, further exacerbating the sovereign de- fault risk. Finally, the third chapter of my dissertation, a joint work with Susanto Basu, investigates the sources of excess consumption volatility in emerging markets. It is a well documented fact that, in emerging markets, consumption is more volatile than output whereas the opposite is true in developed economies. We propose an explanation for this phenomenon that relies on a specific form of financial markets incompleteness: we assume that households would always want to front-load consumption and they can borrow from abroad up to a fraction of the value of posted collateral. With the value of collateral being procyclical, households are able to increase borrowing during an expansion and ultimately consume more than they produce; this mechanism is then able to generate a ratio of consumption volatility to output volatility grater than one. Most importantly, the model delivers the implication that a better ability to borrow vis-a-vis the same value of collateral generates greater relative consumption volatility. We then bring this model's implication to the data and find empirical support for it. We proxy the ability to borrow with various measures of effectiveness of lending regulation and more standard indicators of financial development. Consistent with the model's implication, more lending friendly regulation leads to greater relative consumption volatility in emerging markets; moreover, this link breaks down among developed countries. In addition, among emerging countries, it appears that deeper domestic capital markets have a destabilizing effect in terms of greater relative consumption volatility while a more developed domestic banking system does not exerts any such detrimental effect. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Até a Crise do Subprime que teve início em 2008, o Crash da Bolsa de Nova York ocorrido em 1929 era considerado a crise de maior impacto. As repercussões desta crise entre vários mercados internacionais fez com que o termo \"contágio\" passasse a ser amplamente utilizado no contexto de turbulências do mercado financeiro que a partir de então, deixaram de ser locais e passaram a ter efeitos globais. Neste contexto, os países emergentes tem recebido bastante atenção, já que a maioria das crise que ocorreram antes da Crise do Subprime, tiveram início nestes mercados. Entre os países emergentes, o grupo do BRICS, composto por Brasil, Rússia, Índia, China e África do Sul se destacam, especialmente após 2008, como economias emergentes cujos desempenhos econômicos foram superiores aos dos mercados desenvolvidos. Sabe-se que os movimentos de contágio entre mercados financeiros tendem a ocorrer a partir dos desenvolvidos em direção aos emergentes. Porém, a partir da grande importância atribuída ao grupo de países emergentes pertencentes ao BRICS, a hipótese de que estes mercados se comportariam como mercados desenvolvidos quando analisadas suas relações de interdependência e contágio com outros mercados emergentes se tornou interessante de ser testada. Para que este objetivo fosse alcançado, foram definidos quinze países alocados a três grupos, incluindo o grupo do BRICS. O grupo dos países desenvolvidos foi composto por Estados Unidos, Japão, Alemanha, Inglaterra e França. México, Indonésia, Turquia, Irã e Polônia formaram o grupo dos países emergentes não pertencentes ao BRICS. As análises foram feitas a partir de séries temporais de retornos dos principais índices de cada país, de 2008 a 2013. Inicialmente foram feitas as análises das estatísticas descritivas de cada série e depois foram identificadas as relações entre as séries de retornos dos mercados, para que então os fenômenos de interdependência e contágio pudessem ser investigados. Apesar dos resultados dos testes não terem mostrado que os países do BRICS se comportam como mercados desenvolvidos quando analisada sua influência sobre o comportamento dos outros mercados emergentes, verifica-se que seus países têm maior influência sobre os demais mercados do que os países do grupo dos emergentes não pertencentes ao BRICS. / Financial crisis can be defined as periods in which the volatility of asset returns is too high. Until the Subprime Crisis that began in 2008, the Crash of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929 was considered the most important crisis. Significant changes have occurred over the years and among these changes, a phenomenon started influencing the way the crisis began to be spread across the markets: financial globalization. The impact of this crisis among various international markets has made the term contagion become widely used in the context of financial market turmoil. In this context, emerging countries have received much attention, since most of the crisis that occurred before the Subprime Crisis, started in these markets. Among the emerging countries, the BRICS group consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa stand out, especially after 2008, as emerging economies which economic performance was better than those of developed markets. It is known that the movements of contagion between financial markets tend to occur from the developed markets towards emerging markets. For this reason, it became interesting to test the hypothesis that BRICS markets would behave as developed markets when analyzing their interdependence and contagion to other emerging markets. This thesis aims to investigate if the relationship of interdependence and contagion between the BRICS countries and other emerging markets is similar to that observed between developed countries and emerging BRICS. For that proposal, fifteen countries were allocated to three groups, including the BRICS group. The group of developed countries consisted of the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain and France. Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, Iran and Poland formed the group of emerging countries outside the BRICS. Time series were composed of the most importante stock indexes of each country, from 2008 to 2013. Although the results of the tests have not shown that the BRICS countries behave as developed markets it appears that their countries have a greater influence on other markets than the group of emerging countries outside the BRICS.

Em finanças corporativas e em análises tradicionais de projetos, os modelos de fluxo de caixa descontado têm prevalecido como a estrutura básica para a grande maioria das análises de geração de valor para as empresas. A evolução da teoria de precificação de opções, contudo, adicionou às teorias e práticas usuais de finanças um novo conjunto de ferramentas necessárias para gerenciar e explorar o valor advindo da incerteza e da volatilidade, que ampliam os parâmetros da geração de valor ao acrescentarem os conceitos da flexibilidade gerencial. Dentro deste contexto, o presente trabalho buscou pesquisar e apresentar a metodologia de avaliação de investimentos em ativos reais com base na teoria de precificação de opções ("opções reais"), suas características, limitações e aplicações em ambientes empresariais caracterizados pela alta volatilidade econômica. Neste sentido, a pesquisa inicia-se com a revisão bibliográfica das diversas teorias utilizadas para a avaliação de projetos de investimento, visando apresentá-las desde sua forma mais básica até os principais métodos mais sofisticados e recentes, cujo escopo incorpora conceitos como o valor do dinheiro no tempo e risco. Finalmente, a título de se demonstrar a aplicabilidade dos métodos apresentados, um exercício teórico simulando um caso real é desenvolvido, levando em consideração um ambiente considerado de grande volatilidade, analisando-se as oportunidades que a metodologia de opções reais pode proporcionar. Como resultado desse trabalho, conclui-se que a análise de opções reais pode ser uma alternativa viável e preferencial às metodologias tradicionais, quando inserida num ambiente de grandes incertezas e flexibilidade gerencial, tal como o ambiente geral que caracteriza a América Latina. / In corporate finance and traditional capital budgeting, discounted cash flow methods have prevailed as the basic structure in most approaches to investment and shareholder value analysis. The evolution of the option pricing theory, however, has added a whole new set of tools to the traditional group of theories and practices, necessary to the good management and exploitation of the value from uncertainty and volatility. These tools broaden the value generation parameters by adding the managerial flexibility and uncertainty concepts. Amid this overall context, the present work has tried to research and present the real asset investment analysis methodology based on the option pricing theory (real options), its characteristics, limitations and applications in business environments characterized by high economic volatility. Therefore, this study begins with the review of several theories used in capital budgeting, aiming to present them from their most basic form, up to the main, most sophisticated and recent methods, which include concepts like time value of the money and risk. Finally, in order to demonstrate the applicability of the methods discussed, a theoretical exercise, which simulates a real case, is developed, considering an environment of high volatility, analyzing the opportunities that the real options theory may grant. As a result of this study, it is concluded that the real options analysis may be a viable and preferable alternative if compared to traditional methodologies, when used in an uncertain environment, in association with managerial flexibility, like the general environment that characterizes the Latin America region.

Este trabalho tem por objetivo verificar a eficácia do modelo parametrizado SVI (Stochastic Volatility Inspired), apresentando-o como um método alternativo à construção da volatilidade implícita para opções de ações e de índice no mercado brasileiro. Primeiramente, o conceito financeiro de opção e sua teoria de precificação são apresentados, incluindo os modelos de Black-Scholes e Heston, a importância da volatilidade implícita e seu comportamento estocástico e detalhando o funcionamento de cada parâmetro do modelo SVI (Stochastic Volatility Inspired). Um algoritmo é desenvolvido em cima da base teórica, assim como sua implementação computacional. Além disso, são feitos experimentos com dados de mercado reais e seus resultados analisados e comparados com os de publicações anteriores. / This work aims to verify the efficiency of parameterized SVI (Stochastic Volatility Inspired) model, presenting it as an alternative method to construct the implied volatility for stock and index options in Brazilian market. First, the financial option concept and its pricing theory are presented, including Black-Scholes and Heston models, the importance of implied volatility and its stochastic behavior and detailing the operation of each parameter of the SVI (Stochastic Volatility Inspired) model. An algorithm is developed on top of the theoretical basis, as well as its computational implementation. In addition, experiments are performed with real market data and their results are analyzed and compared with those of previous publications.

Estudos recentes relacionados ao meio ambiente vêm ganhando grande destaque em todo o mundo devido ao fato dos níveis de poluição e a destruição das reservas naturais terem aumentado de maneira alarmante nos últimos anos. As grandes cidades são as que mais sofrem com a poluição e aqui serão estudados os níveis de poluição do ar em duas cidades em particular, a Cidade do México e São Paulo. A Cidade do México apresenta sérios problemas com os níveis de ozônio e São Paulo é a cidade brasileira com os maiores problemas relacionados à poluição. Entre os diferentes modelos considerados para analisar dados de poluição do ar, pode-se considerar o uso de modelos de séries temporais para modelar as médias diárias ou semanais de poluição. Nessa direção pode-se usar modelos de volatilidade estocástica. Essa família de modelos estatísticos tem sido extensivamente usada para analisar séries temporais financeiras, porém não se observa muitas aplicações em dados ambientais e de saúde. Modelos de volatilidade estocástica bivariados e multivariados, sob a aproximação Bayesiana, foram considerados para analisar os dados, especialmente usando métodos MCMC (Monte Carlo em Cadeias de Markov) para obter os sumários a posteriori de interesse, pois pode-se ter muitas dificuldades usando métodos clássicos de inferência estatística / Recent studies related to environmental has been considered in all world due to increasing levels of pollution and of natural resources destruction especially, in the last years. The largest cities in the world are the ones been mostly affected by pollution and in this work we consider the analysis of air pollution data of two important cities: Mexico City and São Paulo. The Mexico City presents serious problems of ozone levels and São Paulo is the Brazilian city with the largest problems related to air pollution. Among the different models which could be used to analyze air pollution data, we consider the use of time series modeling to the weekly or daily levels of pollution. In this way, we consider the use of volatility stochastic models. This family of models has been well explored with financial data but not well explored to analyze environmental and health data. Bivariate and multivariate stochastic models under the Bayesian approach were considered to analyze the data, especially using MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) methods to obtain the posterior summary of interest, since we usually have big difficulties using standard classical inference methods

O objetivo desta dissertação foi avaliar a possível ocorrência de contágio de volatilidade no mercado de energia combustível, com foco em etanol, analisando commodities agrícolas e de energia. São examinados dois cenários. O Cenário I teve como objetivo identificar a presença de volatilidade spillover entre os preços futuros de petróleo e milho, cotados no mercado internacional, e o preço futuro de etanol, cotado no Brasil. Ou seja, se propôs a identificar a presença de volatilidade spillover no mercado futuro de etanol brasileiro. O Cenário II teve como objetivo identificar a presença de volatilidade spillover entre os preços futuros de petróleo e açúcar cotados no mercado internacional em relação ao preço físico de açúcar no Brasil. Neste caso o objetivo foi identificar a presença de volatilidade spillover no mercado físico de etanol brasileiro. As séries de preços trabalhadas abrangem o período de 18/05/10 a 29/12/11 e 20/05/03 a 29/12/11, para cada cenário respectivamente. Utilizou-se para análise uma modelagem GARCH multivariada, em função da robustez de seus resultados e da possibilidade de sua aplicação prática por profissionais do mercado. Concluiu-se que apenas no Cenário II foi possível identificar transmissão de volatilidade entre as estruturas analisadas. Porém, a não observação de contágio no Cenário I pode ter sido decorrente da limitação de dados disponíveis, dado ser recente a existência de contrato futuro de etanol brasileiro e pela baixa liquidez dos contratos negociados, o que incentiva análises futuras que busquem essa comprovação importante para a mitigação dos riscos inerentes a esses mercados. / The aim of this thesis was to evaluate the possible occurrence of volatility contagion in the fuel energy market, with focus on ethanol, analysing agricultural and energy commodities. Two scenarios are evaluated. Scenario I is proposed to identify the presence of volatility spillover between the futures prices of oil and corn, negotiated on the international future market and the futures prices of ethanol, negotiated in Brazil. That is, set out to identify the presence of volatility spillover in the ethanol Brazilian future market. Scenario II is proposed to identify the presence of volatility spillover between the futures prices of oil and sugar listed in the international market in relation to the spot price of sugar in Brazil. In this case the objective was to identify the presence of volatility spillover in the ethanol Brazilian spot market. The price series covered the period 05/18/10 until 12/29/11 and 12/29/11 until 05/20/03, respectively for each scenario. It was used the multivariate GARCH model to analyze this occurrence, because this model give robust results and the possibility of practical application by market professionals. It was concluded that only in Scenario II was identified volatility transmission between the analyzed structures. However, non-observation of contagion in Scenario I may have been due to the limited data available, since it is recent the existence of ethanol Brazilian futures contract and the low liquidity, which encourages future analyzes seeks to prove this evidence, important to mitigating the risks inherent in these markets.

Avec la réduction continue des dimensions des transistors CMOS, le développement des mémoires statiques du type SRAM énergétiquement efficientes et de hautes densités devient de plus en plus difficile. Les dernières années ont vu l'apparition de nouvelles technologies de mémoire, qui ont attiré l'intérêt de la communauté académique, ainsi que de nombreux acteurs industriels. Parmi ces technologies, la STT-MRAM se distingue pour ses caractéristiques très avantageuses, comme sa faible consommation, ses performances et sa facilité d'intégration dans une technologie de fabrication CMOS. En plus, les MRAMs sont des technologies non-volatiles, avec une endurance élevée, nous allons utiliser cette caractéristique pour proposer de nouvelles fonctionnalités aux systèmes intégrés, notamment sur les architectures de processeur et les dispositifs reconfigurables.Une comparaison entre plusieurs amplificateurs de lecture, utilisables pour concevoir des matrices de mémoire et des cellules séquentielles a été aussi menée. Afin de démontrer la faisabilité de la conception hybride CMOS/MRAM plusieurs prototypes ont été conçus sur une technologie 28nm CMOS FDSOI et une technologie magnétique capable de produire des MTJ perpendiculaires STT de 200nm. Nous avons appliqué ces briques de base au monde du processeur notamment en proposant un processeur capable de conserver un état sain lors d'une erreur d'exécution. Les résultats obtenus confirment que le surcout de ces techniques est tout à fait compatible avec la démarche de conception d'un circuit intégré actuel. / With the downscaling of the CMOS technology, it is becoming increasingly difficult to design power-efficient and dense static random-access memories (SRAM). In the last two decades, alternative memory technologies have been actively researched both by academia and industry. Among them, STT-MRAM is one of the most promising, having near-zero static power consumption, competitive performance with respect to SRAM and easy integration with CMOS fabrication processes. Furthermore, MRAM is a non-volatile memory technology, providing for new features and capabilities when embedded in reconfigurable devices or processors. In this thesis, applications of MRAM to embedded processors and field-programmable gate-arrays (FPGAs) were investigated. A comparison of several self-referenced read circuits, with application for both memory arrays and sequential cells is provided, based on MTJ compact models provided by our project partners. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed circuits, we laid-out and fabricated independent, self-contained sequential cells and a hybrid, multi-context CMOS/MTJ memory array, using state-of-the-art 28nm FDSOI CMOS technology, combined with a 200nm perpendicular STT-MTJ process. Finally, we used these building blocks to implement instant on/off and backward-error recovery capabilities in an embedded processor. Results obtained by simulation allowed us to verify that these features have minimal impact on performance. An initial layout implementation allowed us to estimate the impact on silicon footprint, which could be further reduced by improvements in the MTJ integration process.