Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Münster.

<p>This dissertation critically examines predominant political-economic theories of public credit and public debt in light of the origins, development, and recent record expansion in such debt. Using a "history of thought" approach, I focus on those aspects of theory, from three main schools of thought - Classical, Keynesian, and Public Choice - which seek to explain the evolution of public debt, its political-economic causes and effects, the meaning of sustainability in public debt burdens, and the conditions under which governments are likely to monetize or repudiate their debts. For empirical context, I also provide three centuries of data on public debt for major nations, relative to their national income, and government bond-yield data for more recent decades.</p><p>There is value in classifying the major political economists who have examined public credit and public debt since 1700 as "pessimists," "optimists" or "realists." </p><p>Public debt pessimists argue that government provides no truly productive services, that its taxing and borrowing detract from the private economy, while unfairly burdening future generations, and that high and rising public leverage ratios are unsustainable and will likely cause national insolvency and long-term economic ruin. When public debts become excessive or un-payable, pessimists advise explicit default or deliberate repudiation. Public debt pessimists also believe financiers in general and public bondholders in particular are unproductive. Pessimists usually endorse smaller-sized governments and free markets. With few exceptions, most public debt pessimists appear in the Classical or Public Choice schools of thought. Among prominent public debt pessimists, the most representative are David Hume and Adam Smith.</p><p>Public debt optimists believe that government provides not only productive services, such as infrastructure and social insurance, but means to mitigate what they perceived to be "market failures," including savings gluts, economic depressions, inflation, and secular stagnation. Optimists contend that deficit-spending and public debt accumulation can stimulate or sustain economy activity and ensure full employment, without burdening present or future generation. To the extent public debts become excessive or un-payable, optimists tend to advise implicit default, by official and deliberate debasement of the national currency (inflation). As do pessimists, public debt optimists view financiers and bondholders as essentially unproductive. Optimists also defend a relatively larger economic role for the state. Almost without exception, optimists reside in the Keynesian school of political-economic thought. Among the leading optimists, the most representative are Alvin Hansen and Abba Lerner.</p><p>Public debt realists contend that government can and should provide certain productive services, mainly national defense, police protection, courts of justice, and basic infrastructure, but that social and redistributive schemes tend to undermine national prosperity. Realists say public debt should fund only services and projects that help a free economy maximize its potential, and that analysis must be contextualized - i.e., related to a nation's credit capacity, productivity, and taxable capacity. According to realists, public leverage is neither inevitably harmful, as pessimists say, nor infinite, as optimists say. Realists view financiers as productive and insist that sovereigns redeem their public debts in full, on time, and in sound money. Realists favor constitutionally-limited yet energetic governments that help promote robust markets. They appear mainly in the Classical era of political-economic thought. The most representative and renowned of the public debt realists are Sir James Steuart and Alexander Hamilton.</p><p>My main thesis is that public debt realists provide the most persuasive theories of public credit and public debt, and thus the most plausible interpretations of the long, fascinating history of public debt. Moreover, certain puzzles and paradoxes arising in contemporary public debt experience, among developed nations - including the recent, multi-decade trend of simultaneously rising public-leverage ratios and declining public debt yields - is explicable primarily in realist terms. In contrast, public debt pessimists and optimists alike offer unbalanced, inadequate accounts of public debt experience. Whereas pessimists are too often confused or mistaken in foreseeing an alleged "inevitable" ruin from public debt, optimists more often than not are confused and mistaken about the alleged "stimulus" attainable by large-scale deficit-spending and debt build-ups. Looking ahead, the realist perspective is likely to provide superior guideposts for maximally-accurate interpretations of public debt policies and trends.</p> / Dissertation

La tesi contiene due saggi sull'economia delle politiche pubbliche a sostegno dell'accesso al credito per le piccole e medie imprese. Il primo valuta l'impatto netto sulla disponibilità e il costo del credito e sulle performanec delle imprese del più grande schema di garanzie pubbliche al credito in Italia. Il secondo indaga empiricamente gli effetti distorsivi della politica e i costi che ne derivano, con particolare focus sull'eterogeneità a livello di banca e di impresa. / The dissertation deals with the role of public policy in support of firms' access to credit. It is composed of two essays. The first is an evaluation of the net effect of an Italian public credit guarantee scheme in support of PMIs. The impact evaluation assesses financial outputs such as credit availability and conditions, as well as economic outputs such as firms' performance. The second essay empirically investigates how the presence of asymmetry of information can affect the output of these policies at the bank and firm level.

The aim of the thesis Credit registers and their usage is to evaluate the impact of credit registers usage in banking sector. The first part of the thesis focuses on description of credit registers, their creation and functioning at the level of the European Union. The second part describes and compares credit registers in the Czech Republic. The last part analyses the influence of negative information obtained from credit registers on the approval process and the use of registers when offering credit products to clients. In this part the positive influence of the use of credit registers in the banking sector is proved. The method of description and descriptive analysis is used in the thesis.

Submitted by Fernando Barbi (fcbarbi@gmail.com) on 2014-05-07T22:24:44Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE_FERNANDO_CARVALHAES_BARBI_204089_CDEE_FINAL.pdf: 966201 bytes, checksum: 6f481f17555ebd92319058e7f6e4c7ee (MD5) / Rejected by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br), reason: Bom dia Fernando, Conforme conversamos por telefone. Att. Suzi on 2014-05-08T12:02:11Z (GMT) / Submitted by Fernando Barbi (fcbarbi@gmail.com) on 2014-05-08T12:30:01Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE_FERNANDO_CARVALHAES_BARBI_204089_CDEE.pdf: 963867 bytes, checksum: 6b78db46891b72b31e89059c2a176bc9 (MD5) / Rejected by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br), reason: Fernando on 2014-05-08T12:33:32Z (GMT) / Submitted by Fernando Barbi (fcbarbi@gmail.com) on 2014-05-08T12:36:15Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE_FERNANDO_CARVALHAES_BARBI_204089_CDEE.pdf: 963906 bytes, checksum: 467d3c75aa7e81be984b8b5f22430c0b (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2014-05-08T12:38:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE_FERNANDO_CARVALHAES_BARBI_204089_CDEE.pdf: 963906 bytes, checksum: 467d3c75aa7e81be984b8b5f22430c0b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-05-08T13:28:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE_FERNANDO_CARVALHAES_BARBI_204089_CDEE.pdf: 963906 bytes, checksum: 467d3c75aa7e81be984b8b5f22430c0b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-04-08 / In the first essay, 'Determinants of Credit Expansion in Brazil', analyzes the determinants of credit using an extensive bank level panel dataset. Brazilian economy has experienced a major boost in leverage in the first decade of 2000 as a result of a set factors ranging from macroeconomic stability to the abundant liquidity in international financial markets before 2008 and a set of deliberate decisions taken by President Lula's to expand credit, boost consumption and gain political support from the lower social strata. As relevant conclusions to our investigation we verify that: credit expansion relied on the reduction of the monetary policy rate, international financial markets are an important source of funds, payroll-guaranteed credit and investment grade status affected positively credit supply. We were not able to confirm the importance of financial inclusion efforts. The importance of financial sector sanity indicators of credit conditions cannot be underestimated. These results raise questions over the sustainability of this expansion process and financial stability in the future. The second essay, 'Public Credit, Monetary Policy and Financial Stability', discusses the role of public credit. The supply of public credit in Brazil has successfully served to relaunch the economy after the Lehman-Brothers demise. It was later transformed into a driver for economic growth as well as a regulation device to force private banks to reduce interest rates. We argue that the use of public funds to finance economic growth has three important drawbacks: it generates inflation, induces higher loan rates and may induce financial instability. An additional effect is the prevention of market credit solutions. This study contributes to the understanding of the costs and benefits of credit as a fiscal policy tool. The third essay, 'Bayesian Forecasting of Interest Rates: Do Priors Matter?', discusses the choice of priors when forecasting short-term interest rates. Central Banks that commit to an Inflation Target monetary regime are bound to respond to inflation expectation spikes and product hiatus widening in a clear and transparent way by abiding to a Taylor rule. There are various reports of central banks being more responsive to inflationary than to deflationary shocks rendering the monetary policy response to be indeed non-linear. Besides that there is no guarantee that coefficients remain stable during time. Central Banks may switch to a dual target regime to consider deviations from inflation and the output gap. The estimation of a Taylor rule may therefore have to consider a non-linear model with time varying parameters. This paper uses Bayesian forecasting methods to predict short-term interest rates. We take two different approaches: from a theoretic perspective we focus on an augmented version of the Taylor rule and include the Real Exchange Rate, the Credit-to-GDP and the Net Public Debt-to-GDP ratios. We also take an 'atheoretic' approach based on the Expectations Theory of the Term Structure to model short-term interest. The selection of priors is particularly relevant for predictive accuracy yet, ideally, forecasting models should require as little a priori expert insight as possible. We present recent developments in prior selection, in particular we propose the use of hierarchical hyper-g priors for better forecasting in a framework that can be easily extended to other key macroeconomic indicators. / O primeiro ensaio, "Determinantes da expansão do crédito no Brasil", analisa os determinantes do crédito usando um extenso conjunto de dados em painel sobre o sistema bancário. A economia brasileira teve um grande impulso na alavancagem na primeira década de 2000 como resultado de um conjunto de fatores que vão desde a estabilidade macroeconômica passando pela liquidez abundante nos mercados financeiros internacionais antes de 2008 até um conjunto de decisões deliberadas tomadas pelo presidente Lula para expandir o crédito, impulsionar o consumo e obter apoio político das camadas sociais mais baixas. Como conclusões verificamos que a expansão do crédito beneficiou-se da redução da taxa de juros, os mercados financeiros internacionais são uma fonte importante de recursos, o crédito garantido em folha de pagamento e o grau de investimento afetaram positivamente a oferta de crédito. Nós não fomos capazes de confirmar a importância dos esforços de inclusão financeira. A importância dos indicadores de sanidade do setor financeiro de condições de crédito não pode ser subestimada. Estes resultados levantam questões quanto à sustentabilidade desse processo de expansão e estabilidade financeira no futuro. O segundo ensaio, "Crédito Público, Política Monetária e Estabilidade Financeira", discute o papel do crédito público. A oferta de crédito público no Brasil serviu para relançar a economia após a crise desencadeada pela quebra do banco Lehman-Brothers. Mais tarde, ele foi transformado em um motor de crescimento econômico bem como num dispositivo de regulação para forçar os bancos privados a reduzir as taxas de juros. Argumenta-se que a utilização de fundos públicos para financiar o crescimento econômico tem três desvantagens importantes: ele gera inflação, induz taxas de financiamento mais elevadas e pode induzir à instabilidade financeira. Um efeito adicional é impedir o desenvolvimento de soluções de crédito de mercado. O terceiro ensaio, "Previsão Bayesiana de Taxas de Juros: as priors importam?", discute a escolha de priors para previsão das taxas de juros de curto prazo. Bancos Centrais que se comprometem com regimes de metas de inflação devem responder a variações nas expectativa de inflação e no hiato do produto de uma forma clara e transparente, respeitando a regra de Taylor. A estimativa de uma regra de Taylor pode ter que considerar um modelo não-linear com parâmetros variáveis no tempo. Este trabalho usa métodos de previsão bayesiana para as taxas de juro de curto prazo por duas abordagens diferentes. Por uma perspectiva teórica nos concentramos em uma versão aumentada da regra de Taylor. Também testamos uma abordagem baseada na teoria das expectativas da estrutura a termo cauva de juros para modelar os juros de curto prazo. A seleção dos priores é particularmente relevante para a precisão da previsão, no entanto deseja-se usar prior robustas a falta de conhecimento prévio. Apresentamos os recentes desenvolvimentos na seleção de priors, em especial, propomos o uso de priors hierárquicas da família de distribuição hiper-geométrica.

Submitted by Diana Goldemberg (diana.goldemberg@gmail.com) on 2014-08-11T14:24:05Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao GOLDEMBERG - vBiblioteca.pdf: 2905294 bytes, checksum: 2478be29fc9539101356823f4d969567 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by BRUNA BARROS (bruna.barros@fgv.br) on 2014-08-26T17:26:30Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao GOLDEMBERG - vBiblioteca.pdf: 2905294 bytes, checksum: 2478be29fc9539101356823f4d969567 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2014-08-27T19:18:43Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao GOLDEMBERG - vBiblioteca.pdf: 2905294 bytes, checksum: 2478be29fc9539101356823f4d969567 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-08-27T19:20:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao GOLDEMBERG - vBiblioteca.pdf: 2905294 bytes, checksum: 2478be29fc9539101356823f4d969567 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-05-27 / This study aims to evaluate the impact of new credit lines to Brazilian movie exhibition industry, one of the existing forms of government support for this sector. The evaluated disbursements, conducted by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), from 2007 to 2012, consist of long-term credit for opening new screens, with below-market interest rates and a flexible collateral structure. The econometric methodology used is the Synthetic Control Method, as formalized by Abadie et al. (2010). Under this method, it was not possible to identify any positive contribution of the credit policy after comparing the individual performance of the exhibitors who received the credit versus their synthetic controls, nor on the evolution of the number of screens nor on admissions. Furthermore, a possible aggregate effect was tested, considering the evolution of the Brazilian number of admissions per capita, also with no positive contribution of the policy being identified. / O objetivo deste trabalho é avaliar o impacto da criação de linhas de financiamento ao parque exibidor cinematográfico brasileiro, uma das formas existentes de incentivo governamental ao setor. Os desembolsos avaliados, realizados pelo BNDES com recursos do Procult e do FSA de 2007 a 2012, consistem em crédito de longo prazo para a criação de salas de cinema, com juros abaixo do mercado e estrutura de garantias flexível. A metodologia econométrica utilizada é o controle sintético, tal como formalizada por Abadie et al. (2010). Sob esse método, não foi possível identificar contribuição positiva da política de crédito quando se confronta o desempenho individual dos exibidores beneficiados versus seus respectivos controles sintéticos, medido pela evolução das variáveis número de salas e público. Ademais, testou-se um possível efeito agregado, considerando a evolução do número de ingressos per capita no Brasil, também não sendo possível identificar contribuição positiva da política sobre tal indicador.