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A large literature has related the failure of interest rate parity in the foreign exchange market to the existence of a time-varying risk premium. Nevertheless, most modern open economy DSGE models imply a (near) perfect interest rate parity condition. This paper presents a stylized two-country incomplete-markets model in which countries have strong precautionary motives because they face international liquidity constraints, the presence of which successfully generates a time-varying risk premium: the country that has accumulated debt after experiencing relative worse times has stronger precautionary motives and its asset carries a risk premium. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

In the first chapter, I analyze the question that whether the elasticity of intertemporal substitution or risk aversion is more important determinant of precautionary savings. This is an important question since a significant fraction of the capital accumulation is due to precautionary savings according to studies. Thus, knowing the important determinant of precautionary savings will be helpful to understand the capital accumulation mechanism. I look into the effects of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution and risk aversion on precautionary savings separately by performing simulations in order to obtain numerical results. I find that the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is more important determinant than risk aversion. In the second chapter, I study the impact of the introduction of futures trading on the volatility of the underlying spot market for Turkish Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE).The economic literature intensified the debate on the negative or positive impact of futures trading on the stock market volatility. Although there are empirical studies for different countries with mixed results, most of them focus on developed countries. There are a few empirical researches on emerging markets. Analyzing the data, following results are obtained for ISE. First, the results suggest that the introduction of futures trading has decreased the volatility of ISE. Second, the results show that futures trading increases the speed at which information is impounded into spot market prices. Third, the asymmetric responses of volatility to the arrival of news for ISE have increased after the introduction of futures trading. In the third chapter, I investigate the presence of calendar anomalies in ISE by using GARCH models. The presence of calendar anomalies and their persistence presence since their first discovery still remains a puzzle to be solved. On the other hand, there are some claims that general anomalies are much less pronounced after they became known to the public. Most of the studies have examined the developed financial markets. However, it is important to test the calendar effects in data sets that are different from those in which they are originally discovered and so ISE is a good case to test the calendar effects for a developing country. / text

This dissertation consists of three essays on income risk and aggregate demand over the business cycle, each addressing an aspect of the Great Recession. The first chapter reframes the standard liquidity trap model to illustrate the costly feedback loop between idiosyncratic risk and aggregate demand. I first show that a liquidity trap can result from excess demand for precautionary savings in times of high uncertainty. Second, I show that the output and welfare costs of the ensuing recession depend crucially on how the drop in demand for output is translated into a reduction in demand for labor. Increased unemployment risk compounds the original rise in idiosyncratic productivity risk and reinforces precautionary motives, deepening the recession. Third, I show that increasing social insurance can raise output and welfare at the zero bound. I decompose these effects to distinguish the component unique to the liquidity trap environment and show that social insurance is most effective at the zero bound when it targets the type of idiosyncratic risk households face, which in turns depends on the labor market adjustment mechanism. The second paper offers a novel model of the connection between the consumer credit and home mortgage markets through an individual’s credit history. This paper introduces a novel justification for the home mortgage interest deduction. In an economy with both housing assets and consumer credit, the mortgage interest deduction is modeled as a subsidy for the accumulation of collateralizable assets by households who have maintained good credit. As such, the subsidy loosens participation constraints and facilitates risk-sharing. Empirical evidence and a calibration exercise reveal that the subsidy has a sizable impact on the availability of credit. The third paper assesses the role of policy uncertainty in the Great Recession. The Great Recession features substantial geographic variation in employment losses, a fact that is often presented as a challenge to uncertainty-based models of the downturn. In this paper we show that there is a substantial correlation between the distribution of employment losses and the increases in local measures of both economic and policy uncertainty. This relationship is robust across a wide range of measures. / Economics

This thesis investigates the determinants of private savings in Sweden, covering the time period 1914-2014. The steadily increasing fraction of the elderly, as a percentage of the working age population is a demographic development confronted by almost all industrialized countries nowadays. These conditions will bring further economic pressure on the finance of the social security systems in the years to come, hence affecting private savings. The association between private savings, globalization of capital markets and the release of liquidity constraints in many countries might also be an important determinant. These new conditions have in some cases improved consumer welfare by enabling more intertemporal substitution, the process of maximizing consumer’s utility by allocating resources across time. In this study the savings function is estimated based on several aspects concerning demographic and economic factors, based on the theories; life-cycle hypothesis of saving, precautionary saving theory, permanent income hypothesis and the Ricardian Equivalence theory. This study suggests that the private saving function is sensitive to the inflation rate and the policy implication of the relationship is presented.

This dissertation consists of five separate essays (and a short introductory chapter) that analyze the effects of debt policy on private consumption. Essay 1: Government Debt and Private Consumption: Theory and Evidence. The Ricardian equivalence theorem has been widely debated since (at least) the seventies. The theorem states that households should not change their consumption path in response to changed timing of taxes, given the path of government consumption. In this essay, theoretical models giving rise to the equivalence result as well as models predicting deviations from debt neutrality are presented. In general, the Ricardian models are based on unrealistic assumptions, such as infinite horizons, perfect capital markets and lump-sum taxes. The issue of Ricardian equivalence is thus perhaps better viewed as a question concerning to what extent the equivalence hypothesis is a reasonable approximation of the real world. This could only be established by empirical studies. To formulate a test of Ricardian equivalence, it is however vital to extend the standard analysis in deterministic models to stochastic models. In a stochastic model we need to incorporate the fact that agents have to make predictions about future levels of government consumption, and that public debt might be a useful predictor for that purpose. It is therefore necessary that an empirical study distinguishes between debt as a potential source of net wealth, which is the concern of the equivalence proposition, and debt's role as a signal of future levels of government consumption, which is due to the stochastic nature of the world. It is argued that there are few empirical studies that make this distinction, and in case the distinction is made, the evidence is in favor of the Ricardian equivalence proposition, namely that public debt is not net wealth to households. Changing the timing of taxes will therefore not change private consumption. In other words, although the Ricardian equivalence hypothesis is burdened with unrealistic assumptions, it seems (historically) to provide a reasonable approximation of actual data. Essay 2: An Investigation of Ricardian Equivalence in a Common Trends Model. A common trends model for gross national income, private consumption, government consumption and net taxes is estimated on US data. The system has two cointegrating vectors and thus two common stochastic trends, interpreted as a technology trend and a public sector trend. The two temporary shocks are interpreted as a private demand and government financing shock, respectively. Theoretical models suggest that the two cointegrating vectors could be due to the private and public sectors' intertemporal budget constraints. We find two co-integrating vectors, as predicted by no-Ponzi game constraints on the sectors. However, a stronger version of the no-Ponzi game constraint is a solvency condition, which implies particular co-integrating vectors. These cointegration vectors are both rejected for the sample period, indicating that the public sector will not be able to repay its debt if the current policy is maintained. However, the private sector is at the same time accumulating wealth, which is consistent with predictions from a Ricardian model. Further, the equivalence theorem predicts that private consumption should be unaffected by financing shocks. Data, however, indicate that there is a significant short run effect on both income and private consumption from the financing shock, but the effect indicates that increasing taxes is accompanied by increasing private consumption, contrary to both standard Ricardian and Keynesian models. In the theoretical world, this type of pattern could be generated in models with risk averse individuals and uncertainty about future taxes. Essay 3: Risky Taxes, Budget Balance Preserving Spreads and Precautionary Savings. This essay analyzes the effects on consumption from changes in the riskiness of taxes. It starts by reinterpreting the Sandmo [1970] paper on general capital income risk to the case of risky capital taxation. In his framework the concept of a mean preserving spread (MPS) is used for the risk analysis. In connection with risky taxes it is however possible to explicitly connect the tax risk with the government's budget constraint. In this essay the concept of a budget balance preserving spread (BBPS) is developed and used for the analysis of stochastic taxes. The essay is concluded with a comparison of the effects that a MPS and a BBPS has on consumption decisions. It is shown that the comparative statics results for a BBPS could be different from the results obtained with a MPS. Essay 4: Budget Deficits, Tax Risk and Consumption. This essay analyzes the effects of budget deficits on consumption when individual taxes are stochastic. It is shown that the co-movements between budget deficits and private consumption will depend on how risk averse individuals are. In the case of lump-sum taxes, it is sufficient to assume that individuals have a precautionary savings motive to obtain the result that consumption today will decrease with increased disposable income today. Furthermore, if we use a time separable iso-elastic utility funcition, the standard analysis of capital income risk predicts (precautionary) savings to increase with increased risk if the coefficient of relative risk aversion is greater than one. This is no longer sufficient when the risk is due to uncertain capital income taxes. In general, the coefficient must be greater than one to obtain precautionary savings in response to the greater risk implied by a budget deficit. The results in the paper are consistent with Ricardian equivalence only for some specific utility function, but not in general. However, in the same way, the results are consistent with standard Keynesian models that display a positive relation between debt and private consumption only for certain utility functions, and could equally well generate the opposite result for individuals that are enough risk averse or prudent, without changing the expected value of government consumption. In other words, if future taxes are uncertain, increased disposable income in the present period will decrease present consumption, if households are prudent enough. Essay 5: Budget Deficits, Stochastic Population Size and Consumption. This paper analyzes the effects on present consumption of budget deficits under different assumptions regarding demographics. In the first part, birth and death rates are deterministic, and in the second part, birth rates are assumed to be stochastic. In the case of a deterministic population size, an increase in public debt raises present consumption, if the (deterministic) birth rate is greater than zero, while with a zero birth rate we obtain debt neutrality. This is consistent with the results in Blanchard [1985] and Buiter [1988]. However, for the case of stochastic birth rates, it is shown that we can obtain the result that present consumption will decrease when public debt is increased, both when we have a zero expected birth rate, and when the expected population size is assumed to be constant, so that the expected birth rate is positive and equal to the death rate. The explanation is that with an uncertain birth rate, the future tax base is uncertain, which makes per capita taxes uncertain in the future. Shifting taxes to the future thus implies greater uncertainty about future net income, and induces precautionary savings. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.

Differences in financial systems are often named as a prime candidate for the current state of global imbalances. This paper focuses on cross-country heterogeneity in access to international financial markets that derives from the presence of capital controls and argues that the process of capital liberalization over the past decades can explain a substantial fraction of US net external liabilities. We present a simple two-country model with an internationally traded bond, in which capital controls are reflected in the presence of borrowing and lending constraints on that bond. In a US versus the rest of the world (RoW) scenario, we perform experiments that are largely consistent with countrie' liberalization experiences. A reduction in the RoW's controls on capital outflows and/or a tightening in the RoW's borrowing constraint enables the US economy to better insure against consumption risk relative to the rest of the world, and therefore decreases its motives for precautionary asset holdings relative to the rest of the world. As a result of these asymmetric shifts in countries' barriers to capital mobility, the US runs a long run external deficit.

The savings ratio for Swedish households is record-breaking and Sweden, together with the rest of the world, is currently in the middle of a pandemic. What drives individuals to save is based on a number of different factors that previous research has concluded. The purpose of this study is to, with previous research as a basis, investigate which factors affect the savings ratio for Swedish households. Quarterly data for the years 1982–2020 is analyzed in a time series by first processing for unit roots and then cointegration. The data is then estimated in a multiple linear regression in the form of an “Error Correction Model”, with the intention of investigating both the short-term and long-term relationship. The results of the study indicate that the variables that have a significant impact on the change in the household savings ratio are GDP per capita, inflation, unemployment and consumption, while public savings and the development of the stock market have a significant but less considerable effekt. The economic theories that the study findssupport for are the theory of precautionary savings as well as the standard buffer-stock model. / Sparkvoten hos svenska hushåll är rekordhög och Sverige, tillsammans med resten av världen, befinner sig för närvarande mitt i en pandemi. Vad som driver individer till att spara grundar sig i en rad olika faktorer som tidigare forskning kommit fram till. Syftet med denna studie är att, med tidigare forskning som grund, undersöka vilka faktorer som påverkar sparkvoten för svenska hushåll. Kvartalsdata för åren 1982–2020 analyseras i en tidsserie genom att först behandlas för enhetsrötter och sedan kointegration. Därefter skattas de i en multipel linjär regressionsanalys i form av en ”Error Correction Model”, med avsikt att utreda både det kortsiktiga- och långsiktiga sambandet. Resultatet av studien indikerar att de variabler som har en signifikant betydande påverkan på förändringen i hushållens sparkvot är BNP per capita, inflation, arbetslöshet samt konsumtion, medan offentligt sparande och utveckling av aktiemarknaden har en signifikant men mindre betydande effekt. De ekonomiska teorier som studien finner stöd i är teorin om försiktighetssparandet samt standard buffertlager-modellen.