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In this paper, we have employed non-linear model reexamine real interest parity (RIP) of five European economies with respect to the US. We focus on using linear and nonlinear unit root tests to test real interest rate differentials (RIRD). And we add time trend in the logistic and exponential smooth transition regression models to monthly data. The results are as follows. First, the evidence for the full-sample is favorable using three traditional unit root tests and one powerful nonlinear unit root test. Almost all economics are support real interest parity. Second, we use nonlinear error correction model to find which factors influence on RIRD. There are three economics influenced by both domestic and foreign factors at the same time.

This dissertation contains a series of essays that provide empirical evidence for Australia on some fundamental predictions of real business cycle models and on the convergence and persistence of real interest rates. Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to the issues examined in each chapter and provides an overview of the methodologies that are used. Tests of various basic predictions of standard real business cycle models for Australia are presented in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. Chapter 2 considers the question of great ratios for Australia. These are ratios of macroeconomic variables that are predicted by standard models to be stationary in the steady state. Using time series econometric techniques (unit root tests and cointegration tests) Australia great ratios are examined. In Chapter 3 a more restrictive implication of real business cycle models than the existence of great ratios is considered. Following the methodology proposed by Canova, Finn and Pagan (1994) the equilibrium decision rules for some standard real business cycle are tested on Australian data. The final essay on this topic is presented in Chapter 4. In this chapter a large-country, small-country is used to try and understand the reason for the sharp rise in Australia??s share of world output that began around 1990. Chapter 5 discusses real interest rate linkages in the Pacific Basin region. Vector autoregressive models and bootstrap methods are adopted to study financial linkages between East Asian markets, Japan and US. Given the apparent non-stationarity of real interest rates a related issue is examined in Chapter 6, viz. the persistence of international real interest rates and estimation of their half-life. Half-life is selected as a means of measuring persistence of real rates. Bootstrap methods are employed to overcome small sample issues in the estimation and a non-standard statistical inference methodology (Highest Density Regions) is adopted. Chapter 7 reapplies the High Density Regions methodology and bootstrap half-life estimation to the data used in Chapters 2 and 5. This provides a robustness check on the results of standard unit root tests that were applied to the data in those chapters. Main findings of the thesis are as follows. The long run implications of real business cycle models are largely rejected by the Australia data. This finding holds for both the existence of great ratios and when the explicit decision rules are employed. When the small open economy features of the Australian economy are incorporated in a two country RBC model, a country-specific productivity boom seems to provide a possible explanation for the rise in Australia??s share of world output. The essays that examine real interest rates suggest the following results. Following the East Asian financial crisis in 1997-98 there appears to have been a decline in the importance of Japan in influencing developments in the Pacific Basin region. In addition there is evidence that following the crisis Korea??s financial market became less insular and more integrated with the US. Finally results obtained from the half-life estimators suggest that despite the usual findings from unit root tests, real interest rates may in fact exhibit mean-reversion.

This paper reexamines the long-run real interest rate parity of the OECD countries by using the unit root test proposed by Ng and Perron (2001) and by the application of simulation to establish the small sample distribution under the null and the alternative hypothesis. By using the small sample distribution of the unit root statistics, we can make sure that first, size distortions are not the reasons contributing to the rejection of the fact that the alternative hypothesis is unit root. Second, the inference that the low power is not necessary causes the not rejecting the alternative hypothesis is correct. If still can not decide which distributions might cause the real interest difference series by comparing the unit root statistics and the relative location of the small sample distribution, we test that whether the series are asymmetric in those countries which we can not decide what kind of distributions they are by the threshold autoregression model proposed by Caner and Hansen (2001). Finally, the empirical results indicate that the RIPH holds in Australia¡BBelgium¡BCanada¡BFinland¡BFrance¡BGermany¡BJapan and Sweden whenever data frequency under linear time series model. Under quarterly data of Italy and United Kingdom and monthly data of Denmark, it turns out that the data have the traits of nonlinear time series model. Besides, the evidence of supporting the long-run real interest rate parity can not be reached and the phenomena that partial unit root exist in United Kingdom and Denmark.

This dissertation contains a series of essays that provide empirical evidence for Australia on some fundamental predictions of real business cycle models and on the convergence and persistence of real interest rates. Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to the issues examined in each chapter and provides an overview of the methodologies that are used. Tests of various basic predictions of standard real business cycle models for Australia are presented in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. Chapter 2 considers the question of great ratios for Australia. These are ratios of macroeconomic variables that are predicted by standard models to be stationary in the steady state. Using time series econometric techniques (unit root tests and cointegration tests) Australia great ratios are examined. In Chapter 3 a more restrictive implication of real business cycle models than the existence of great ratios is considered. Following the methodology proposed by Canova, Finn and Pagan (1994) the equilibrium decision rules for some standard real business cycle are tested on Australian data. The final essay on this topic is presented in Chapter 4. In this chapter a large-country, small-country is used to try and understand the reason for the sharp rise in Australia??s share of world output that began around 1990. Chapter 5 discusses real interest rate linkages in the Pacific Basin region. Vector autoregressive models and bootstrap methods are adopted to study financial linkages between East Asian markets, Japan and US. Given the apparent non-stationarity of real interest rates a related issue is examined in Chapter 6, viz. the persistence of international real interest rates and estimation of their half-life. Half-life is selected as a means of measuring persistence of real rates. Bootstrap methods are employed to overcome small sample issues in the estimation and a non-standard statistical inference methodology (Highest Density Regions) is adopted. Chapter 7 reapplies the High Density Regions methodology and bootstrap half-life estimation to the data used in Chapters 2 and 5. This provides a robustness check on the results of standard unit root tests that were applied to the data in those chapters. Main findings of the thesis are as follows. The long run implications of real business cycle models are largely rejected by the Australia data. This finding holds for both the existence of great ratios and when the explicit decision rules are employed. When the small open economy features of the Australian economy are incorporated in a two country RBC model, a country-specific productivity boom seems to provide a possible explanation for the rise in Australia??s share of world output. The essays that examine real interest rates suggest the following results. Following the East Asian financial crisis in 1997-98 there appears to have been a decline in the importance of Japan in influencing developments in the Pacific Basin region. In addition there is evidence that following the crisis Korea??s financial market became less insular and more integrated with the US. Finally results obtained from the half-life estimators suggest that despite the usual findings from unit root tests, real interest rates may in fact exhibit mean-reversion.

O fato de haver na economia brasileira um baixo volume de crédito ao setor privado, tornando mais difícil o acesso das empresas a financiamentos que lhes possibilitem aceitar projetos de investimentos que as faria maiores e mais lucrativas, desenvolvendo o setor empresarial e a sociedade como um todo, é a motivação deste trabalho que busca avaliar o impacto de três fatores específicos no nível de crédito ao setor privado existente em um país: (i) o nível de eficiência jurídica; (ii) o grau de instabilidade econômica; e (iii) o volume de poupança total. A importância de tais fatores é fundamentada na revisão da literatura e sua análise, através do uso de regressões simples e múltiplas do tipo cross-section envolvendo 207 países, confirmou em todas as especificações a hipótese de que quanto mais eficiente for o sistema jurídico de um país, maior será o volume de crédito nele disponível. O grau de instabilidade econômica e o nível de poupança se mostraram também fatores condicionantes do volume de crédito, mas não em todas as especificações e com um impacto menor ao verificado para o sistema jurídico. Estimativas mostraram que o volume de crédito ao setor privado no Brasil seria 43% superior ao observado caso houvesse uma melhoria de apenas meio desvio padrão nas medidas referentes às três variáveis independentes acima citadas. Fatores adicionais foram brevemente avaliados como o nível da taxa de juros real, o grau de participação nos fluxos internacionais de comércio e o nível de desenvolvimento. Esses fatores se mostraram também importantes e merecem estudos que os tenham como foco. Espera-se com este estudo contribuir para a compreensão do funcionamento do mercado de crédito e para a discussão a respeito de medidas e posturas que possam ser adotadas no Brasil e no mundo visando seu desenvolvimento, que se reflete no desenvolvimento das empresas e da sociedade. / The fact that the Brazilian economy has a low volume of credit available to the private sector, making it difficult for the companies to have access to loans which would able them to accept investment projects and could make them larger and more profitable companies, developing the business sector and the society, is the motivation of this work that reaches to evaluate the impact of three specific factors in the credit volume existing in one country to the private sector: (i) the level of the legal system efficiency; (ii) the economic instability level; and (iii) the total volume of savings accounts. Those factors importance are based on the literature review and it’s analysis, by the use of simple and multiple cross-section regressions involving (two hundred and seven) 207 countries, have confirmed in all of the specifications that as more efficient is its legal system, higher will be the volume of credit available in such country. The economic instability level and the total volume of savings accounts have showed also to be factors related to the credit volume, but not in all specifications and with a lower impact compared to the impact verified by the legal system. Estimations have showed that the credit volume to the private sector in Brazil would be 43% higher than the actual in case an improvement of only half standard deviation in the measures referred to the 3 independent variables above mentioned. Additional factors were also briefly evaluated, like the real interest rate level, the participation on the international trade flow and the development level. Such factors have also showed importance and do deserve studies of their own. It is a purpose of this study to contribute for the understanding of the credit market and its performance and for the discussion of measures and postures, which could be adopted in Brazil and in the world objecting its development that reflects on the companies and the society development.

In this study, neutral real interest rate gap and output gap are estimated jointly under two different multivariate unobserved components models with the motivation to provide empirical measures that can be used to analyze the amount of stimulus that monetary policy is passing on to the economy, and to understand historical macroeconomic developments. In the analyses, Kalman filter technique is applied to a small-scale macroeconomic model of the Turkish economy to estimate the unobserved variables for the period 1989-2005. In addition, two alternative specifications for neutral real interest rate are used in the analyses. The first model uses a random walk model for the neutral real interest rate, whereas the second one employs more structural specification, which specifically links the neutral real rate with the trend growth rate and the long-term course of the risk premium. Comparison of the models developed by using various performance criteria clearly indicates the use of more structural specification against random walk specification. Results suggest that though there is relatively high uncertainty surrounding the neutral real interest rate estimates to use them directly in the policy-making process, estimates appear to be very useful for ex-post monetary policy evaluations.

This study investigates the validity of the real exchange rate-real interest rate differential (RERI) relationship for a sample of twenty-three developing and developed countries. The results based on the Johansen cointegration analysis suggest the validity of the long-run RERI relationship only for a small number of countries including Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Chile, Israel and Norway. Real interest rate differentials are found to be positively associated with real exchange rates in the long-run for every country except Israel. The results of the weak exogeneity tests suggest that real exchange rates are the adjusting variables for Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and Israel. Consistent with an endogenous response of domestic interest rates to a real exchange rate shock policy rule, real interest rate differentials are found to be endogenous for the parameters of the cointegration vector for Canada, Chile and Norway.

O fato de haver na economia brasileira um baixo volume de crédito ao setor privado, tornando mais difícil o acesso das empresas a financiamentos que lhes possibilitem aceitar projetos de investimentos que as faria maiores e mais lucrativas, desenvolvendo o setor empresarial e a sociedade como um todo, é a motivação deste trabalho que busca avaliar o impacto de três fatores específicos no nível de crédito ao setor privado existente em um país: (i) o nível de eficiência jurídica; (ii) o grau de instabilidade econômica; e (iii) o volume de poupança total. A importância de tais fatores é fundamentada na revisão da literatura e sua análise, através do uso de regressões simples e múltiplas do tipo cross-section envolvendo 207 países, confirmou em todas as especificações a hipótese de que quanto mais eficiente for o sistema jurídico de um país, maior será o volume de crédito nele disponível. O grau de instabilidade econômica e o nível de poupança se mostraram também fatores condicionantes do volume de crédito, mas não em todas as especificações e com um impacto menor ao verificado para o sistema jurídico. Estimativas mostraram que o volume de crédito ao setor privado no Brasil seria 43% superior ao observado caso houvesse uma melhoria de apenas meio desvio padrão nas medidas referentes às três variáveis independentes acima citadas. Fatores adicionais foram brevemente avaliados como o nível da taxa de juros real, o grau de participação nos fluxos internacionais de comércio e o nível de desenvolvimento. Esses fatores se mostraram também importantes e merecem estudos que os tenham como foco. Espera-se com este estudo contribuir para a compreensão do funcionamento do mercado de crédito e para a discussão a respeito de medidas e posturas que possam ser adotadas no Brasil e no mundo visando seu desenvolvimento, que se reflete no desenvolvimento das empresas e da sociedade. / The fact that the Brazilian economy has a low volume of credit available to the private sector, making it difficult for the companies to have access to loans which would able them to accept investment projects and could make them larger and more profitable companies, developing the business sector and the society, is the motivation of this work that reaches to evaluate the impact of three specific factors in the credit volume existing in one country to the private sector: (i) the level of the legal system efficiency; (ii) the economic instability level; and (iii) the total volume of savings accounts. Those factors importance are based on the literature review and it’s analysis, by the use of simple and multiple cross-section regressions involving (two hundred and seven) 207 countries, have confirmed in all of the specifications that as more efficient is its legal system, higher will be the volume of credit available in such country. The economic instability level and the total volume of savings accounts have showed also to be factors related to the credit volume, but not in all specifications and with a lower impact compared to the impact verified by the legal system. Estimations have showed that the credit volume to the private sector in Brazil would be 43% higher than the actual in case an improvement of only half standard deviation in the measures referred to the 3 independent variables above mentioned. Additional factors were also briefly evaluated, like the real interest rate level, the participation on the international trade flow and the development level. Such factors have also showed importance and do deserve studies of their own. It is a purpose of this study to contribute for the understanding of the credit market and its performance and for the discussion of measures and postures, which could be adopted in Brazil and in the world objecting its development that reflects on the companies and the society development.

The demographic structure seems to change dramatically over the next 50 years in the Czech Republic. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of expected demographic changes on the future development of a real interest rate and international capital flows. In order to simulate the impact of the expected demographic changes upon the mentioned variables we apply a computable overlapping generations model. The real interest rate development is simulated under a closed economy assumption. As a result of the future expected demographic changes labour-capital ratio tends to fall, i.e. the real interest rate diminishes. The range of a change is significantly affected by a public budget closure rule. In case of an endogenous income tax rate, the real interest rate falls down by 0.5 percentage point. On the contrary, the real interest rate decreases by almost 1 percentage point in case when public transfers adjusted. Assuming an open economy, we simulate the impact of the expected demographic changes on the international capital flows between the domestic economy and the rest of the world. In case of increasing ratio of older agents, the aggregate domestic wealth surpasses the demand for capital by domestic firms. As a result a part of domestic capital is exported abroad. Increasing level of net foreign assets contributes to positive change in ratio of the balance of payment to the domestic production in a range from 2 to 5 percentage points over next 40 years if income taxes or public transfers change respectively.