The objective of the thesis is to find out whether expansionary monetary policy creates an upward pressure on asset prices and can thus create asset price bubbles, or more precisely significantly contribute to their creation. In doing so, we test the significance and the sign of coefficient on monetary policy stance indicator as a determinant of real estate and stock prices on 19 OECD countries quarterly panel data since 1980. Further we assess periods of real estate and stock price bubbles and periods of expansionary monetary policy and examine their relationship. The asset price bubbles are assessed on the basis of relevant price indices developments without examining the underlying fundamentals. Based on our results it appears that expansionary monetary policy has a positive effect on real estate prices and can thus contribute to formation of real estate bubbles. The effect on stock prices is ambiguous and mostly statistically insignificant. By examining the relationship between assessed asset price bubbles and periods of expansionary monetary policy we found out that monetary expansion is neither sufficient nor necessary condition for formation of asset price bubbles but also that there is a relatively strong relationship between these events. JEL Classification C23, E43, E52, E58, G12, N10, N20...

Au cours de la dernière décennie, les prix des logements ont augmenté de façon spectaculaire dans plusieurs pays à travers le monde. Par exemple, les prix des logements aux États-Unis, en Espagne et en Irlande ont été marqués par des cycles d'expansion et de récession les plus marquants de leur histoire. L'augmentation concomitante des prix des logements (et dans certains cas l’occurrence des épisodes d'expansion - récession) dans de nombreuses économies avancées soulève quelques questions importantes. Y a t-il eu une bulle immobilière dans les pays avancés? Quels sont les principaux déterminants de l'évolution des prix des logements dans ces pays? Est-ce que les marchés immobiliers des pays avancés sont-ils interdépendants? Le premier chapitre propose une modélisation structurelle des modèles VAR Bayésiens pour les États-Unis, la France, l'Espagne et la Grèce qui examinent les effets relatifs de l'évolution du secteur réel de production, du secteur financier et des flux internationaux de capitaux sur les marchés du logement. Un deuxième exercice tente d'identifier la présence de régimes de bulles immobilières à partir d’une modélisation Markovienne à deux états. Les principaux résultats liés au marche américain montrent que les entrées de capitaux étrangers, mesurées par le solde de la balance courante en pourcentage du PIB, comptent pour plus de 30 % de la variance des chocs qui frappent les prix des logements, tandis que les taux d’intérêt contribuent pour environ 38 %. En France, la politique monétaire a le plus grand pouvoir explicatif des évolutions du marché du logement, tandis qu'en Espagne et en Grèce, les taux hypothécaires variables et les investissements dans le logement exercent la plus grande influence sur le marché du logement. Tous les pays ont connu un régime de bulle immobilière sur la majeure partie des années 2000.Le deuxième chapitre utilise une approche de type Global VAR (ou GVAR) qui porte sur la modélisation des interdépendances internationales des prix immobiliers. Le modèle GVAR a été estimé empiriquement en utilisant des données trimestrielles de sept pays, pour la période 1987-2011. Les résultats montrent que les chocs des prix immobiliers originaires des États-Unis ont de fortes répercussions sur tous les pays, avec les plus fortes magnitudes observées pour l'Irlande. Ce résultat suggère que les marchés immobiliers pourraient être soumis à des effets de contagion du comportement des marchés financiers et que le secteur immobilier peut être analysé comme un actif spéculatif. Les liens entre les taux d'intérêt réels à long terme sont positifs et statistiquement significatifs dans tous les pays, même si ils ont un rôle limité sur l'évolution des prix immobiliers. Les chocs négatifs sur les prix immobiliers aux États-Unis ont des effets négatifs et statistiquement significatifs sur le PIB réel aux États-Unis, le Canada et l'Irlande.Le troisième chapitre est consacré au financement de la première guerre mondiale par les Etats-Unis et le rôle de la War Finance Corporation (WFC). Plus spécifiquement, on s’intéresse aux fluctuations des rendements des bons du Trésor américain émis entre novembre 1917 et décembre 1920. L’analyse économétrique est basée sur des techniques de séries temporelles Bayésiennes. Les principaux résultats montrent que les chocs positifs sur les achats de la WFC engendrent une réponse négative et statistiquement significative sur tous les types de rendements des bons de guerre. En outre, les achats de la WFC des bons Liberty et Victory, à l'exception du premier prêt des bons Liberty, ont eu un effet statistiquement significatif sur l'évolution des taux à court terme. Les achats de la WFC de la deuxième et de la quatrième émission des bons Liberty ont eu des effets significatifs et positifs sur les taux à court terme, ce qui suggère une déformation de la courbe des taux. / During the last decade, housing prices have increased dramatically in several countries around the world. For instance, housing prices in the United States, Spain, and Ireland have been marked by one of the most striking boom-bust cycles in their history. The concomitant increase in housing prices (and in some cases boom-bust episodes) across many advanced economies raises the following important questions. Was there a housing bubble across advanced countries? What are the main determinants of the housing price movements in these countries? Are the advanced countries' housing markets interrelated? The first chapter of the dissertation estimates a set of structural Bayesian VAR models for the U.S., France, Spain, and Greece that examine the relative effects of developments in the real production sector, the financial sector, and international capital flows on the housing market. A second exercise attempts to identify the presence of housing price bubble regimes by estimating a set of two state Markov-switching Bayesian VAR models. The main results for the U.S. show that foreign capital inflows, measured by the current account balance as a percentage of GDP, account for more than 30\% of the variance of the shocks hitting housing prices, while adjustable mortgage rates contribute about 38\%. In France, monetary policy has the largest explanatory power for the housing market evolutions, while in Spain and Greece, the variable mortgage rates and housing investments exert the largest influence on the housing market. All the countries experienced a bubble regime over most of the 2000s. The second chapter uses a Global VAR model estimated using quarterly data from seven countries, for the period 1987-2011, to analyze the interdependencies that exist between domestic and international factors in housing markets. We find that housing price shocks originating in the U.S. have large spillover effects on all the countries, with the largest magnitudes on Ireland. This result suggests that housing markets may be subject to contagion effects and that housing can be analyzed as a speculative asset, based on international data spanning the past two decades. Linkages in long-run real interest rates are positive and statistically significant across all the countries, although they have a limited role on the evolution of housing prices. Negative shocks to the U.S. housing prices have negative and statistically significant effects on real GDP in the U.S., Canada, and Ireland. The third chapter studies the price fluctuations of war bonds issued by the U.S Treasury in order to finance the World War I between November 1917 and December 1920. Bayesian time series techniques are used to carry out the analyses. We are focusing on the effects that the bond-purchasing program of the War Finance Corporation (WFC) had on the evolution of war bond yields. Our main results show that positive shocks to WFC purchases display a negative and statistically significant effect on all types of war bond yields. Furthermore, WFC purchases of Liberty and Victory Bonds, except the First Liberty Loan, had a statistically significant effect on the evolution of commercial paper rates. WFC purchases of the Second and Fourth Liberty Bonds had significant and positive effects on commercial paper rates, suggesting a twist in the bond yield curve.

The goal of this thesis is to demonstrate why it is so difficult to find answer whether monetary policy should include asset prices into monetary rule and therefore increase financial stability. This is because monetary policy is potentially able to prevent the emergence of price bubbles. However, definition of bubbles is problematic itself, as well as identification, even ex-post. It appears that the inclusion of asset prices in monetary policy can reduce the variability of output, at the cost of increasing variability of inflation. The necessary condition is the ability to influence asset prices through monetary policy and early identification of imbalances. Furthermore, on empirical data from the Czech Republic and the USA is shown in the example of the 2008 crisis, that the central banks can use the warning signals from the market assets (eg. real estate market). But current monetary policy is not focused on financial stability. Macroprudential policy, combined with to some extent discretionary monetary policy represent a real and likely trajectory of future economic policy in the form of a new framework of care for financial stability.

The indebtedness of Swedish households has more than doubled in the last ten decades despite the implementation of a mortgage ceiling and stricter amortization requirements. This study takes form to investigate how it is possible that debt related to housing is rising while new regulations against it has been set and how housing prices continues to increase when lending is supposed to be harder.This analysis estimates whether there are indications of an existing price bubble in the housing market of Stockholm. It is done by testing fundamental economic factors to the price index of housing in Stockholm, to see if they support the price development. If the analysis shows that housing prices cannot be predicted by the fundamental economic factors, it is possible that the price is a self-running series1 which could be an indicator of a price bubble. If fundamental factors that are being used as control variables seem to follow the same trend as the price development of the housing market, the speculation of price bubble will be rejected.

本研究的目的在於了解台灣地區的農地地價是否符合現值模型，是否存在價格泡沫，以及農地做農業使用時是否存在機會成本。經由VAR模式分析之後發現，就本研究的農地資料而言，台灣地區的農地地價並不符合現值模型，而有價格泡沫現象，此一價格泡沫現象又以位於都市近郊的農地較為明顯。至於農地農用的機會成本，在本研究的實證結果中並不顯著，推論可能是我國現行農地買賣有所限制，以及實證資料係取自「核心農家」的農地所致。 　　價格泡沫現象的存在，推測是現行土地使用規劃與管制不確實所致，策研擬應以落實土地利用規劃與管制為要。另外，由於農地農用之機會成本並不明顯，表示目前的農地地價尚無法反應工、商業的土地需求，故以地價高低為指標的農地釋出政策，宜再審慎考慮。

This thesis presents two classes of models of boundedly rational decision makers - one with application to finance and the other to pricing. It consists of three parts. The first part of the thesis investigates the impact of investors' boundedly rational forecasting on asset price bubbles. We present a class of models, called extrapolation-correction models, of boundedly rational investor behavior. That is, the investors in our model, quite reasonably, use data available to them, i.e. past price data, to form forecasts about future prices. We relate the model parameters to various behavioral aspects like investor memory, caution/confidence, and panic. We present the resulting dynamical system model of asset price bubbles and relate the behavior of the dynamical system to the parameters capturing investor forecasting behavior. We show that, depending on the behavioral parameters, the associated dynamical system can converge to the fundamental value, go into predictable price cycles, or go into unpredictable price cycles. In particular, we find that the greater the weight investors' forecasts put on the most recent observations, the greater the tendency for the asset prices to exhibit cycles, forming positive and negative bubbles. We also find that when forecasts are strongly affected by recent prices, the price process becomes chaotic and it becomes increasingly difficult to forecast future prices accurately. The second part of the thesis addresses the question: How do investors make their price forecasts? We present the design of an experiment where investors participate in a virtual asset market run over a computer network. During the course of the experiment, the participants report their price forecasts and enter buy and sell orders. The computer software determines the market clearing prices. Despite full disclosure of the assets' dividends and the fundamental value, the price trajectories in all three experimental sessions exhibited cycles. We calibrated various models, including rational expectations based models and the extrapolation-correction family of models presented in the first part of the thesis. The results indicate that rational expectations hypothesis does not provide an accurate model of forecast formation. Moreover, a simple one-parameter exponential smoothing model is much better at modeling forecast formation, with the extrapolation-correction models making the fit slightly better. The third part of the thesis explores a different aspect of customer rationality - that of customer impatience - and its effect on pricing of product versions. We consider a setting in which impatient customers are faced with frequent product introductions, for example, products like Apple iPhones. This raises the following questions regarding customers: Given the pricing strategy of the firm, what are the optimal buying behaviors of the customers? How does customer buying behavior change in relation to impatience? We consider two settings. In the first setting, the firm offers a trade-in price for existing customers and a higher full price for new customers. In the second setting, the firm offers the same prices to new and existing customers, however there is an introductory full price and a discounted price later in the product cycle. We model the customer's problem in these two settings and characterize their optimal actions as a function of the price parameters. We also analyze the bilevel program for the firm's pricing decisions. We see that in both settings considered there are certain well-defined regions in the price space wherein the firm's optimal decision lies. We also provide some numerical computations to study the behavior of the optimal prices as the cost per unit increases.

The thesis analyses and compares the economies of Spain and Ireland in the run up to and during the current economic and financial crisis. Firstly, the focus is on the pre-crisis period since the mid 90's, the causes and extent of the price bubble on the property markets, the caracter of lending boom and the indebtedness of the private sector. The end of the lending boom and conjuncture on the real estate markets in 2006-2007 had strong impact on real economy and the financial sector. Both countries currently pass through a three-level crisis: economic, banking and debt crisis. The aim of the thesis is to examine their causes, evolution and causal links. The paper also illustrates future perspectives of both countries in context of the membership in EMU and possible solutions to their current situation.

La conduite des politiques économiques a été mise en question après le déclenchement de la crise financière en 2007. Cette thèse analyse les faiblesses identifiées dans la réglementation existante avant la crise et propose des pistes d’amélioration. Le premier chapitre s’intéresse à l’existence du canal de la prise de risque en zone euro. Parle biais des mesures de causalité de long terme, nous démontrons que la politique monétaire a une influence sur le niveau de risque financier. Un autre constat tiré de cette analyse concerne l’absence des mesures de risque systémique.Par conséquent, le deuxième chapitre étudie les mesures proposées après la crise pour les institutions financières et les applique aux États membres de la zone euro. A l’aide de ces mesures, les autorités pourront imposer des règles plus strictes aux pays les plus risqués d’un point de vue systémique. Le chapitre trois envisage une première solution visant à atténuer l’effet des décisions monétaires sur le risque. Nous étudions, à travers un modèle DSGE, l’impact de la stratégie de “leaning against the wind” sur les cycles économiques et financiers. Les résultats montrent qu’unetelle approche n’est pas suffisante pour stabiliser l’économie et que des arbitrages entre objectifs apparaissent. Pour cette raison, le dernier chapitre porte plus en détail sur les arbitrages entre objectifs, et propose, comme une deuxième solution, l’intégration des mesures macroprudentielles dans l’analyse. En utilisant un modèle Néo-Keynésien sous forme réduite, nous trouvons que les fonds propres contracycliques aident à réduire la volatilité des cycles, mais que les trade-offs demeurent en cas de chocs financiers. Le rôle de la banque centrale dans le maintien de la stabilité financière s’avère aussi important, puisque l’utilisation du leaning against the wind semble améliorer la volatilité des cycles. / The conduct of economic policy has been called into question after the outbreak of the financial crisis in2007. This thesis analyzes the flaws identified in the regulation enforced before the crisis and offers suggestionsfor improvement. The first chapter focuses on the existence of the risk-taking channel in the Eurozone. Throughmeasures of long-term causality, we demonstrate that monetary policy influences the level of financial risk. Anotherconclusion drawn from this analysis is the absence of systemic risk measures. Therefore, the second chapter analyzesthe measures proposed after the crisis for financial institutions and applies them to members of the Eurozone. Basedon these measures, authorities may impose stricter rules on countries that prove to be systemically risky. Chapterthree considers a first solution to mitigate the effect of monetary policy decisions on risk. We study, through a DSGEmodel, the impact of the "leaning against the wind" strategy on economic and financial cycles. The results show thatthis approach is not sufficient to stabilize the economy and that it gives rise to trade-offs between objectives. For thisreason, the last chapter examines in more detail the trade-offs between objectives, and proposes as second solution,the integration of macroprudential measures in the analysis. Using a reduced form New-Keynesian model, we find thatcountercyclical capital helps to reduce the volatility of cycles, but trade-offs appear in case of financial shocks. Therole of the central bank in maintaining financial stability seems also important, as the use of leaning against the windimproves cycles’ volatility.

The thesis addresses the instabilities in stock markets in the USA. There are many factors that may increase the price volatility, or even cause a panic. During these turbulent times investors can seek shelter in investment safe havens that allow protecting their portfolio against significant financial losses. The focus is put on identifying the situations where it is appropriate to use the safe havens and how to properly time all transactions. Historical insight, events study and investigating economic cycles are the integral part of the work.

日本經濟自1990年起，由「日本第一」落入「流動性陷阱」，而陷入長達10多年的不景氣，主因是日本股市及不動產市場重挫，企業向銀行貸款所提供之擔保品價值下滑，卻因在低利率時代已過度借貸，又經營不善面臨虧損，發生償債困難，一旦財務有所改善，只想提前償還貸款，而無增加貸款意願，故稱為「資產負債表的衰退」（Balance Sheet Recession）。整體經濟景氣蕭條，國內需求不振，亦使振興經濟之寬鬆貨幣政策無法達到預期效果。 日本資產泡沫的破滅使銀行體系的逾放問題日益嚴重。日本政府為了加強銀行體系的健全性，實施金融改革（Big Bang）。使原本以傳統存、放款業務為主的銀行，在面臨國際化浪潮時，也能同時經營證券、保險業務，並將新金融商品引進日本。並由隸屬於內閣府的金融廳(Financial Services Agency)來監督日本銀行及證券業務，負責金融檢查及金融法規企劃業務，落實金融與財政分離之原則。但日本金融業務日益多元化，及衍生性金融商品日趨複雜，對金融監理機關之專業能力，形成新的挑戰。以上所述為日本國內的經濟與金融問題。 至於日圓對外幣的匯率方面，由於日圓利率偏低，套利交易(carry trade) 盛行。投資人趁著日本央行維持低利率之際，借入低成本的日圓資金，然後換成利率較高的外幣轉戰國際市場，追逐收益較高的資產，同時賺取利差、匯率及資產升值的價差，使日圓匯率的走勢疲弱，也造成全球金融市場的波動。 本論文的分析包含： ㄧ、日本經濟不景氣問題剖析：股市及不動產資產泡沫化 二、日本金融危機形成原因：資產價格下跌，影響抵押品價值，企業償債能力變差，故使銀行不良債權增加。 三、日本總體經濟近況（GDP、CPI、失業率的變化）及經濟復甦後日本央行貨幣政策的改變 四、日本金融市場如股市、房地產市場及日本政府債券（JGB）市場的分析及展望。 五、探討日本銀行業獲利能力、不良債權問題、資本適足率以及銀行業股價指數的變化。 六、根據台灣以及日本最近的發展對金融監理單位及銀行業提出應有的改革與建議。 / The Japanese economy fell into a “liquidity trap” in 1990. Due to the stock market and real estate market plunge, the deep recession has lasted for over 10 years. The bursting of asset bubbles caused the balance sheets of enterprises to become weaker and weaker. All companies hoped to reduce their debt to banks if they were profitable. They had no intention to reinvest any more. So it was called - Balance Sheet Recession. Even though the Bank of Japan adopted an easy monetary policy, the financial system remained vulnerable. With the bad debt of commercial banks increasing, the NPL (non-performing loan) problem has been a major concern for city banks and regional banks. Japan's "Big Bang" reforms radically altered its financial marketplace. The barriers separating banks, securities, and insurance companies were lowered. The Financial Services Agency replaced Ministry of Finance to oversee banking, securities and exchange and insurance in order to ensure the stability of the financial system. As for financial business diversified and derivative products complicated, there were many great challenges facing the financial regulatory authorities. During the past decade, the yen carry trade has become a target for many investors or speculators. Traders using this strategy attempt to capture the difference between the interest rates of two currencies. Taking USD/Yen for example, they borrowed the cheaper yen and invested in U.S. Treasuries yielding a higher interest rate. It causes the depreciation of Japanese Yen and increases the volatility of financial markets. This essay describes Japanese financial crisis, Japanese monetary policy, stock market, and real estate market. Besides, I analyze the profitability, capital adequacy, and non-performing problems of Japanese banks. Finally, I give my personal opinions on Taiwan and Japan’s banking industry.