Diese kumulative Dissertation untersucht in drei Kapiteln den Effekt von Risiko auf Firmenentscheidungen und die Fähigkeit von Firmen, Risiken mit ihren Stakeholdern zu teilen. Die betrachteten Firmen sind Skihotels in österreichischen Skigebieten. Das erste Kapitel ist eine umfassende Studie zur Risikoteilung zwischen Skihotels und ihren Stakeholdern. Es gibt zwei hauptsächliche Ergebnisse. Erstens wird gezeigt, dass Unternehmer Wetterrisiko mit ihren Arbeitnehmern teilen, selbst aber kein Wetterrisiko tragen. Dieses Ergebnis ist in Widerspruch zur Vorstellung des Unternehmers als Risikoträger. Das zweite Ergebnis ist, dass Firmen Wetterrisiko mit ihrer Hausbank teilen. Das zweite Kapitel untersucht anhand von Banken in österreichischen Skigebieten die Rolle des Interbankenmarkt. Die Banken in Skigebieten sind Liquiditätsschocks ausgesetzt, die durch touristisch bedingte Nachfrageschocks erzeugt werden. Der Effekt dieser Schocks auf die Kredittätigkeit ist Gegenstand dieser Studie. Das Ergebnis der Studie ist, dass Banken mehr Kapital auf dem Interbankenmarkt beschaffen, wenn sie ihren Kunden in der Realwirtschaft in Folge eines Nachfrageschocks Liquidität gewähren müssen. Das dritte Kapitel untersucht, wie die Beschäftigung von kleinen Firmen auf Risiko in der Arbeitsproduktivität reagiert. Ein Ergebnis ist, dass das abhängig ist von der Kapitalisierung des lokalen Bankenmarktes. Es wird gezeigt, dass eine Zunahme in transitiven Arbeitsproduktivitätsrisiko die Bereitschaft der Firmen verringert Arbeitnehmer einzustellen. Dieser Effekt ist umso stärker, je schlechter lokale Banken kapitalisiert sind. Es scheint, als würde ein Mangel an Kapital in Bankensektor die Fähigkeit von Skihotels mindern, Arbeitsproduktivität einzugehen. / This thesis contains three chapters that empirically study the impact of risk on firm level decisions and firms’ ability to share risks with their stakeholders. The firms that are studied in all three papers are hotels in Austrian ski resorts. The first chapter provides a comprehensive study of the risk sharing between Austrian ski hotels and their stakeholders. We obtain two main results. The first main finding is that the entrepreneurs share snow-induced sales risk with their workers, while the dividend payments to the entrepreneurs are not affected by these exogenous shocks to firms’ sales. This finding opposes the view of the entrepreneur as a risk taker. We find that hotels insure their workers against weather-induced sales shocks only if the shocks are highly temporary during the winter-season. The second main result is that entrepreneurs share exogenous sales risk with their house-banks. The second chapter empirically analyzes interbank lending using a sample of banks in Austrian ski resorts. The banks are subject to liquidity shocks due to weather-induced demand shocks in ski tourism. We analyze the effect of these shocks on interbank lending and borrowing. In our analysis, we use snow in ski resorts as an instrumental variable for the possibly endogenous demand shocks. The analysis reveals that banks reduce their net lending to other banks at times when they need to provide liquidity to their non-bank customers. The third chapter empirically studies how small-firm employment respond to labor productivity risk. We show that this depends on the equity capital of local banks. We find that an increase in the risk of transitory productivity shocks reduces firms’ willingness to commit to employing workers. This effect is stronger if local banks have less equity capital. It appears that a lack of bank equity reduces firms’ capacity to take labor productivity risk.

This thesis investigates the market rules of the European carbon market (EU ETS) during 2005-2007. We provide theoretical and empirical analyses of banking and borrowing provisions, price drivers and risk hedging strategies attached to tradable quotas, which were introduced to cover the CO2 emissions of around 10,600 installations in Europe.In Chapter 1, we outline the economic and environmental effects of banking and borrowing on tradable permits markets. More specifically, we examine the banking and borrowing provisions adopted in the EU ETS, and the effects of banning banking between Phases I and II on CO2 price changes. We show statistically that the low levels of CO2 prices recorded until the end of Phase I may be explained by the restriction on the inter-period tranfer of allowances, besides the main explanations that were identified by market observers.In Chapter 2, we identify the carbon price drivers since the launch of the EU ETS on January 1, 2005. We emphasize the central role played by the 2005 yearly compliance event imposed by the European Commission in revealing the net short/long position at the installation level in terms of allowances allocated with respect to verified emissions. The main result of this study features that price drivers of CO2 allowances linked to energy market prices and unanticipated weather events vary around institutional events. Moreover, we show the influence of the variation of industrial production in three sectors covered by the EU ETS on CO2 price changes by applying a disentangling analysis, that has also been extended at the country-level.In Chapter 3, we focus on the risk hedging strategies linked to holding CO2 allowances. By using a methodology applied on stock markets, we recover the changes in investors' average risk aversion. This study shows that, during the time period considered, risk aversion has been higher on the carbon market than on the stock market, and that the risk is linked to an increasing price structure after the 2006 compliance event. With reference to Chapter 1, we finally evaluate how banking may be used as a risk management tool in order to cope with political uncertainty on a tradable permits market. We detail an optimal risk-sharing rule, and discuss the possibility of pooling the risk linked to allowance trading between agents.Overall, this thesis highlights the inefficiencies following the creation of the European carbon market that prevented the emergence of a price signal leading to effective emissions reductions by industrials. However, in a changing institutional environment, these inefficiencies do not seem to have been transfered to the period 2008-2012.

This collection of essays examines the topic of macroeconomic stabilisation in an international context, focusing on monetary policy, capital controls and exchange rates. Chapter 1, written in collaboration with Giancarlo Corsetti and Joao Duarte, reconsiders the effects of common monetary policy shocks across countries in the euro area, using a data-rich factor model and identifying shocks with high-frequency surprises around policy announcements. We show that the degree of heterogeneity in the response to shocks, while being low in financial variables and output, is significant in consumption, consumer prices and macro variables related to the labour and housing markets. Mirroring country-specific institutional and market differences, we find that home ownership rates are significantly correlated with the strength of the housing channel in monetary policy transmission. We document a high dispersion in the response to shocks of house prices and rents and show that, similar to responses in the US, these variables tend to move in different directions. In Chapter 2, I build a two-country, two-good model to examine the welfare effects of capital controls, finding that under certain circumstances, a shut-down in asset trade can be a Pareto improvement. Further, I examine the robustness of the result to parameter changes, explore a wider set of policy instruments and confront computational issues in this class of international macroeconomic models. I document that within an empirically relevant parameter span for the trade elasticity, the gains from capital controls might be significantly larger than suggested by previous contributions. Moreover, I establish that a refined form of capital controls in the shape of taxes and tariffs cannot improve upon the outcome under financial autarky. Finally, results show that the conjunction of pruning methods and endogenous discount factors can remove explosive behaviour from this class of models and restore equilibrating properties. In Chapter 3, I use a panel of 20 emerging market currencies to assess whether a model that combines fundamental and non-fundamental exchange rate forecasting approaches can successfully predict risk premia (i.e. currency excess returns) over the short horizon. In doing so, I aim to overcome three main shortcomings of earlier research: i) Sensitivity to the chosen sample period; ii) seemingly arbitrary selection of explanatory variables that differs from currency to currency; and iii) difficulty in interpreting forecasts beyond the numerical signal. Based on a theoretical model of currency risk premia, I use real exchange rate strength combined with indicators for carry, momentum and economic sentiment to homogeneously forecast risk premia across all 20 currencies in the sample at a monthly frequency. In doing so, the model remains largely agnostic about structural choices, keeping arbitrarily imposed restrictions to a minimum. Results from portfolio construction suggest that returns are significant and robust both across currencies as well as over time, with Sharpe Ratios in out-of-sample tests above 0.7.

La position actuellement dominante parmi juristes et théoriciens de la Finance Islamique penchant vers l’interdiction des produits dérivés dans les Institutions Financières Islamiques, la recherche d’une alternative à ces produits, en particulier pour la gestion des risques de marché, constitue l’un des axes de recherche fondamentaux concernant l’avenir de cette école de pensée et de ce type d’institutions. Ainsi, ce travail de thèse s’intéresse d’abord à l’inférence des significations financières contemporaines possibles du concept islamique dit de « Gharar interdit » (litt. « risque interdit ») en l’opposant notamment à la prise de risque permise, puis, à partir des résultats correspondants, à l’exploration et proposition d’instruments alternatifs aux dérivés. Sur le premier aspect, cette recherche est partie du patrimoine du Fiqh (« jurisprudence ») islamique, et a mobilisé des outils qualitatifs et numériques d’analyse, tout en s’inspirant de la méthode de l’idéaltype de Max Weber. Sur le second, elle a mis en oeuvre une enquête combinant littérature et terrain, avant de faire passer les instruments obtenus par un filtre construit à partir des résultats du premier aspect. Ce travail a principalement permis de jeter une lumière nouvelle sur les théories de la prise de risque et du Gharar en Islam, de repérer et de discuter les zones d’ombre à l’origine des débats contemporains, de dresser un état des lieux de la recherche d’alternatives, d’identifier et de comprendre un phénomène nommé trappe à réplication, et surtout, de proposer une voie générale de sortie, utilisant la théorie islamique du besoin et de l’intérêt général, l’idée de partage du risque et celle d’alternative. / The currently prevailing position among Islamic Finance’s jurists and theorists being to prohibit derivative products in Islamic Financial Institutions, the search for an “Islamic” alternative to these products, in particular for market risks’ management, constitutes one of the fundamental axes of research concerning the future of this school and type of institutions. Thus, this doctoral work deals with the inference of the possible contemporary meanings of the Islamic concept called “prohibited Gharar” (litt. “prohibited risk”) while opposing it to the permissible risk-taking, then, based on the corresponding findings, it deals with the exploration and proposal of alternative instruments to derivatives. On the first aspect, this research used texts of Islamic Fiqh (“jurisprudence”), and mobilised qualitative and numerical tools of analysis, while drawing on Max Weber’s method of the idealtype. On the second, it implemented a survey combining literature and field study, before passing the obtained instruments through a filter constructed from the results of the first aspect. This work has mainly contributed to shed a new light on the theories of risk-taking and Gharar in Islam, to identify and discuss the shadow areas behind contemporary debates, to draw up an inventory of research on alternatives, to identify and understand a phenomenon called replication trap, and especially, to propose a general way out, using the Islamic theory of need and public interest, the idea of risk-sharing and that of alternative.

This thesis consists of four self-contained empirical essays. In the first essays "Markets for Risk and Openness to Trade: How are They Related?" (with Helena Svaleryd), we ask if there is an empirical relationship between financial development and openness to trade. Numerous theoretical papers have noted that trade policies can be used as an insurance against shocks from international markets. It follows that the development of markets for risk should reduce the incentives to rely on trade policy for insurance purposes. Feeney and Hillman (2001) explicitly demonstrate how asset-market incompleteness can affect trade policy in a model where trade policy is determined by the lobbying of interest groups. If risk can be fully diversified, special-interest groups have no incentive to lobby for protection, and free trade will prevail. Likewise, trade liberalization might increase the demand for financial services, thereby spurring the development of financial markets. Using several indicators of both openness to trade and financial development, we find an economically significant relation between the two. In particular, the relation holds when using the well known, although criticized (Rodriguez and Rodrik 1999), Sachs-Warner index, and structurally adjusted trade, as indicators of openness. For tariff levels and non-tariff barriers, the results hold only for relatively rich countries. Causality seems to be running both from openness to financial development and the other way around, depending on which indicator and methodology are used. Due to underlying technological differences, industries differ in their need for external financing (Rajan and Zingales, 1998). Since services provided by the financial sector are largely immobile across countries (Pagano et al., 2001), the pattern of specialization should be influenced by the degree of financial development. In the second essay, "Financial Markets, the Pattern of Specialization, and Comparative Advantage: Evidence from OECD Countries" (with Helena Svaleryd), we find this effect to be strong. In fact, the financial sector has an even greater impact on the pattern of specialization among OECD countries than differences in human- and physical capital. Further, the financial sector gives rise to comparative advantage in a way consistent with the Hecksher-Ohlin-Vanek model. Large and active stock markets, as well as the degree of concentration in the banking sector, produce the strongest and most consistent effects. The results also support the view that the quality accounting standards and the legal protection of creditors affect the pattern of industry specialization, while the depth of the financial system (measured by the amount of liquidity in an economy) is a source of comparative advantage. The third essay, "Who Wants Political Integration? Evidence from the Swedish EU-Membership Referendum" looks directly at the determinants of political attitudes towards regional integration and separation. More precisely, the regional voting pattern of the 1994 Swedish EU-membership referendum is analyzed. To explain this variation, an empirical investigation based on the extensive theoretical literature analyzing the determinants of regional economic and political integration is undertaken. Since enhanced possibilities of inter-regional risk sharing is one of the main gains from integration discussed in the literature (e.g Persson and Tabellini, 1996), special attention is given to this issue. The empirical results show that individuals living in labor markets exposed to a high degree of risk were more negative towards EU-membership than those living in safe ones. It is also shown that inhabitants of high-income labor markets, with a high level of schooling and small receipts of central government transfers were relatively positive towards the EU-membership. Given the restrictive regulations limiting discretionary policies within the EU, these results suggest that inhabitants of safe and rich regions voted in favor of secession from the Swedish transfer system, rather than in favor of European integration. In the final essay, "Does Labor Market Risk Increase the Size of the Public Sector? Evidence From Swedish Municipalities", I study if a high degree of private labor-market risk is related to a larger public sector in Swedish municipalities. The theoretical hypothesis is based on Rodrik (1998), who argues (and shows empirically) that countries exposed to a high degree of external risk also tend to have larger governments. The safe public sector is expanded at the expense of risky sectors and hence provides insurance against income volatility. Several problems related to data availability and comparability that apply to cross-country studies are circumvented by using data on Swedish municipalities. Further, there is no need to aggregate the public sector across different levels of governance: local risk is directly related to the size of the local public sector. The paper is not a complete parallel to Rodrik’s study, however. Several alternative insurance mechanisms that do not exist between countries are available between municipalities. For example, the central government provides insurance against individual-specific risk such as unemployment and illness, private capital markets are better integrated within than between countries, and the central government can hand out grants to municipalities. Despite these mitigating factors, local labor-market risk is found to have a substantial impact on municipal public employment. It is also found that shocks increasing the size of the public sector across all municipalities tend to generate a larger increase in risky locations. For municipal public spending and taxation the results are, however, much weaker. Hence, labor-market risk affects the labor intensity of the municipal public sector, rather than its size. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2002</p>

Submitted by Emil Gludsted (emil.gludsted2014@gvmail.br) on 2016-12-19T21:20:10Z No. of bitstreams: 1 MPGI Thesis - Emil Brohl Gludsted - Dec'19 2016 vf.pdf: 3020698 bytes, checksum: 358ae13dcfdff17ec0c5c1b1a639c91d (MD5) / Rejected by Josineide da Silva Santos Locatelli (josineide.locatelli@fgv.br), reason: Dear Emil, The pages before introduction must to be considered, however, but they can’t appear (example, if there were 8 pages before introduction, then the first page to be numbered is 9 – Introduction), The epigraph must to be before the abstract. on 2016-12-20T10:49:17Z (GMT) / Submitted by Emil Gludsted (emil.gludsted2014@gvmail.br) on 2016-12-20T19:52:24Z No. of bitstreams: 2 MPGI Thesis - Emil Brohl Gludsted - Dec'19 2016 vf.pdf: 3020698 bytes, checksum: 358ae13dcfdff17ec0c5c1b1a639c91d (MD5) MPGI Thesis - Emil Brohl Gludsted - Dec'20 2016 vf.pdf: 2957721 bytes, checksum: 148202567b3f2d2bd77107e5c9ea53ac (MD5) / Rejected by Josineide da Silva Santos Locatelli (josineide.locatelli@fgv.br), reason: Emil, There was just two change to do, but the thesis is the same way. All the pages must to be considerated, but the numbers must to start (appear) in the introduction. So, if your work has 11 pages before the introduction, the number on the introduction must to be 12. The epigraph must to be before the abstract, the sequence is: epigraph, abstract and resumo. on 2016-12-21T11:15:58Z (GMT) / Submitted by Emil Gludsted (emil.gludsted2014@gvmail.br) on 2016-12-21T12:26:05Z No. of bitstreams: 1 MPGI Thesis - Emil Brohl Gludsted - Dec'21 2016 vf.pdf: 2957630 bytes, checksum: 1ff24b2e9893e6d5bdcb3d6f7e5f5f9e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Josineide da Silva Santos Locatelli (josineide.locatelli@fgv.br) on 2016-12-21T13:52:43Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 MPGI Thesis - Emil Brohl Gludsted - Dec'21 2016 vf.pdf: 2957630 bytes, checksum: 1ff24b2e9893e6d5bdcb3d6f7e5f5f9e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-22T13:14:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MPGI Thesis - Emil Brohl Gludsted - Dec'21 2016 vf.pdf: 2957630 bytes, checksum: 1ff24b2e9893e6d5bdcb3d6f7e5f5f9e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-07 / Type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease projected to grow tremendously in prevalence. Basal insulin analogues used to be the most efficacious treatment and last step in therapeutic intensification. Today, demographic, economic and epidemiologic transitions have placed pressure on healthcare systems and payers’ budgets. Three imminent threats require the basal insulin regimen to rethink how value can be addressed in the market: mounting institutional pricing pressure, biosimilar competition and, new innovative anti-diabetic drug classes with the potential to delay insulinization. Products aspiring to compete in the basal insulin regimen must avoid commoditization and steer clear of new threats. This paper identifies seven strategies and tactics to successfully address value in the diabetes market and particularly in the basal insulin regimen: 1) cost-based advantage and price competition; 2) value-based pricing; 3) risk-sharing agreements; 4) redifferentiation and post-approval evidence generation; 5) combination products carrying complementary mechanisms of action; 6) treating comorbidities and adjacent diseases; and, 7) indicating for patient sub-populations. / A diabetes tipo 2 é uma doença progressiva cuja projeção é crescer tremendamente em prevalência. Análogos de insulina basal eram considerados o tratamento mais eficaz, e utilizados em último instância durante a intensificação terapêutica. Hoje, transições demográficas, econômicas e epidemiológicas tem colocado pressão nos sistemas de saúde e no orçamento dos usuários. Três iminentes ameaças levam o regime de insulina basal à necessidade de repensar a maneira como seu valor é apresentado ao mercado: crescente pressão institucional sobre os preços, competição de biosimilares e novas classes medicamentos inovadores anti-diabetes com o potencial de atrasar a insulinização. Produtos que buscam competir no regime de insulina basal devem evitar a comoditização e esquivar-se de novas ameaças. Este trabalho identifica sete estratégias e táticas para apresentar de maneira bem sucedida valor no mercado de diabetes e particularmente no regime de insulina basal: 1) vantagem baseada em custo e competição por preço; 2) precificação baseada em valor; 3) acordos de compartilhamento de riscos; 4) rediferenciação e geração de evidencias pós-aprovação; 5) produtos combinados que apresentam mecanismos complementares de ação; 6) tratamento de co-morbidades e doenças adjacentes; e, 7) indicação para pacientes de determinados sub-grupos da população.

Dans cette thèse, nous donnerons tout d'abord des conditions sur les paramètres d’une EDSR à générateur lipschitzien ou à croissance quadratique telles que les processus solutions de l’EDSR admettent des densités par rapport à la mesure de Lebesgue. Puis, nous donnerons des conditions sur les paramètres d’une EDSR non-markovienne à générateur lipschitzien ou quadratique telles que les processus solutions de l’EDSR admettent une dérivée de Malliavin, à l’aide d’une nouvelle caractérisation de cette dérivée. Ce résultat nous fournira une nouvelle structure interne des espaces de Malliavin que nous étudierons. Nous donnerons ensuite des conditions nous assurant que des solutions d’EDSR non-markoviennes à générateurs lipschitziens stochastiques sont différentiables au sens de Malliavin en utilisant cette caractérisation. Nous ferons ensuite une analyse de densités pour les lois des solutions de telles EDSR et nous appliquerons nos résultats à la biologie. Enfin, nous étudierons deux exemples d’utilisations des EDSR en finance. On s’intéressera tout d’abord à un problème de maximisation d’utilité avec un horizon aléatoire que nous réduirons à l’analyse d’un nouveau type d’EDSR à coefficients singuliers et nous illustrerons nos résultats par des simulations numériques. Puis, nous résoudrons un problème de type Principal/Agent sous volatilité incertaine. / In the first part of this PhD thesis, we give conditions on the parameters of Lipschitz and quadratic growth BSDEs such that the laws of the components Y and Z of the solutions to such BSDEs admit densities with respect to the Lebesgue measure. We then provide conditions on the parameters of non-Markovian Lipschitz or quadratic growth BSDEs such that the components Y and Z of their solutions are Malliavin differentiable. We obtain these conditions by applying a new characterization of the Malliavin differentiability, as an Lp convergence criterion of difference quotients. This result provide also a new characterization of the Malliavin-Sobolev spaces that we study in detail. To finish this first theoretical part, we provide conditions ensuring that solutions of non-Markovian stochastic-Lipschitz BSDEs are Malliavin differentiable by applying the characterization of the Malliavin differentiability obtained. We then analyse the existence of densities for the laws of the components of solutions to such BSDEs and we apply our result to a model of gene expression. In the second part of this thesis, we investigate financial problems dealing with BSDEs. We first solve a utility maximization problem with a random horizon, characterized by an exogenous default time. We reduce it to the analysis of a specific BSDE, which we call BSDE with singular coefficients, when the default time is assumed to be bounded. We give conditions ensuring the existence and the uniqueness of solutions to such BSDE and we illustrate our results by numerical simulations. Then, we solve a Principal/Agent problem with ambiguity, in which the "Nature" impacts both the utilities of the Agent and the Principal, charaterized by sets of probability measures which modify the volatility.

We present three chapters on theoretical issues of banking. These deal with bank runs, risk sharing, lending and profitability. In the first chapter, we examine the agency problem in the bank-depositor relationship. Depositors are the principals and banks are the agents. Banks choose investment portfolios and are subject to moral hazard in that they have incentive to take on more risk than desirable to depositors because they are residual claimants. We study an incentive-compatible mechanism that prompts banks to follow a safe investment policy. This mechanism leaves the bank a profit margin in a similar manner to a CEO being paid a bonus by a company. In the second chapter, we extend Allen and Gale (1998) by adding a long-term riskless investment opportunity to the original portfolio of a short-term liquid asset and a long-term risky illiquid asset. Through portfolio diversification, we identify the risk-sharing deposit contract in a three-period model that maximizes the ex-ante expected utility of depositors. Unlike Allen and Gale, there are no information-based bank runs in equilibrium. In addition, our model can improve consumers' welfare over the Allen and Gale model. I also show that the bank will choose to liquidate the cheaper investments, in terms of the gain-loss ratios for the two types of existing long-term assets, when there is liquidity shortage in some cases. Such a policy reduces the liquidation cost and enables the bank to meet the outstanding liability to depositors without large liquidation losses. In the third chapter, we study the role of banks in providing loans to borrower firms. This paper extends the theory of designing optimal loan contracts (for profits) in the Bolton and Scharfstein (1996) model to a setting where asymmetry of information exists. Based on the verifiability of information structure, we analyze complete and incomplete contracts. Through this analysis, optimal, incentive-compatible loan contracts that maximize the expected profit of the bank are characterized. Our analysis suggests that a bank could be induced to liquidate a borrower's project under specific conditions. Furthermore, we identify implementable mechanisms for the renegotiation game given the bargaining power between a borrower and a bank.

Cette thèse est composée de trois articles indépendants qui ont pour trait commun d’analyser le comportement d’investisseurs et de firmes en situation de concurrence imparfaite. Nous considérons d’abord un modèle de marché financier à la Kyle (1985) où les investisseurs peuvent produire soit un signal (fondamental) sur la valeur d’un actif risqué, soit un signal (non-fondamental) sur la demande aléatoire des noise traders. Nous montrons que réduire le coût du signal non-fondamental détériore l’efficience informationnelle du prix du titre et,sous certaines conditions, le bien-être des noise traders. Nous étendons ensuite le modèle au cas où les investisseurs non-fondamentalistes soumettent des ordres à cours limité. Leur activité s’apparente alors à du “front running”. Par ce biais, nous enrichissons nos résultats et montrons que l’effet potentiellement néfaste de l’accès à l’information non-fondamentale persiste.Nous considérons ensuite un marché à la Kyle (1985) où des agents non informés échangent pour un motif de partage de risque avec des investisseurs répartis sur un réseau.Ces derniers partagent leurs signaux avec leurs contacts, ce qui formalise une meilleure diffusion de l’information. Nous évaluons alors l’effet de cette hypothèse sur deux critères: le profit spéculatif et l’espérance d’utilité des agents non informés qui mesure l’efficacité du partage de risque sur le marché. Nous montrons que l’ajout du réseau peut simultanément améliorer ces deux critères ainsi que l’efficience informationnelle du prix. Un résultat original qui ne peut pas être obtenu sans l’ajout du réseau. Enfin, nous caractérisons la coopération graduelle entre deux firmes concurrentes de tailles différentes incapables de contracter et dont les contributions sont irréversibles. Nous montrons que l’asymétrie entre les deux firmes ralentit fortement le processus de collaboration,ce qui souligne l’importance des arrangements contractuels dans certaines situations. Nous montrons aussi qu’un renforcement de la concurrence entre les deux firmes peut nuire au bien-être social en réduisant leur capacité à collaborer. / This thesis contains three distinct papers related to the behavior of investors or firms acting under imperfect competition. First, we consider a Kyle’s (1985) model where investors can produce either a (fundamental) signal on the value of the risky asset, or a (non fundamental)signal on the forth coming demand from noise traders. We show that reducing the cost of the non-fundamental signal worsens price informativeness as well as the welfare of noise traders under some conditions. Then, we extend the model by allowing non fundamental traders to submit limit orders. Their activity is then analogous to front running. By this mean, we enrich our results and show that the potentially detrimental effect of non-fundamental information still pertains. Then, we consider a market à la Kyle (1985) where uninformed hedgers trade for risk sharing purposes with investors located on a network, who share their signal with their“contacts”. This hypothesis formalizes a better diffusion of information. We evaluate its effect on speculative gains and hedgers’ expected utility which depends on the risk sharing role of the market. We show that the introduction of the network might simultaneously improve these two welfare measures as well as price informativeness. An original result that cannot be obtained otherwise. Finally, we consider a contribution game between two competitors of different sizes. We obtain the value of their (irreversible) contributions during each period of the game. We show that the asymmetry between the two firms strongly slowers the collaboration process,high lighting the importance of contractual arrangements in some circumstances. Also, we obtain that increasing competition might be detrimental to social welfare, because it harms the ability of the two firms to set up a mutually beneficial process of collaboration.

Cette thèse comporte trois essais en macroéconomie en économie ouverte et commerce international. Je considère tour à tour les questions suivantes: sous quelles conditions est-il optimal pour un pays de former une union économique? (essai 1); l'augmentation de la dispersion transversale des avoirs extérieurs nets des pays est-elle compatible avec une dispersion relativement stable des taux d'investissement? (essai 2); le risque de perte de marché à l'exportation du fait de l'existence des zones de commerce préférentiel joue t-il un rôle dans la décision des pays exclus de négocier des accords commerciaux à leur tour? (essai 3). Le premier essai examine les conditions d'optimalité d'une union économique. Il s'intéresse à une motivation particulière: le partage du risque lié aux fluctuations du revenu. Dans la situation initiale, les pays ont très peu d'opportunités pour partager le risque à cause des frictions: les marchés financiers internationaux sont incomplets et il n'y pas de mécanisme pour faire respecter les contrats de crédit entre pays. Dans ce contexte, une union économique apparait comme un arrangement qui pallie à ces frictions entre les pays membres seulement. Cependant, l'union dans son ensemble continue de faire face à ces frictions lorsqu'elle échange avec le reste du monde. L'arbitrage clé dans le modèle est le suivant. D'un coté, l'intégration économique permet un meilleur partage du risque entre pays membres et la possibilité pour le partenaire pauvre d'utiliser la ligne de crédit du partenaire riche en cas de besoin. De l'autre coté, l'union peut faire face à une limite de crédit plus restrictive parce que résilier la dette extérieure est moins coûteux pour les membres l'union. De plus, le fait que le partenaire pauvre peut utiliser la limite de crédit du partenaire riche génère une externalité négative pour ce dernier qui se retrouve plus fréquemment contraint au niveau des marchés internationaux des capitaux. En conformité avec les faits observés sur l'intégration économique, le modèle prédit que les unions économiques sont relativement peu fréquentes, sont plus susceptibles d'être créées parmi des pays homogènes, et généralement riches. Le deuxième essai porte sur la dispersion des avoirs extérieurs nets et la relation avec la dispersion des taux d'investissement. Au cours des récentes décennies, la dispersion croissante des déséquilibres extérieurs et les niveaux record atteints par certaines grandes économies ont reçu une attention considérable. On pourrait attribuer ce phénomène à une réduction des barrières aux mouvements internationaux des capitaux. Mais dans ce cas, il est légitime de s'attendre à une augmentation de la dispersion au niveau des taux d'investissement; ceci, parce que le financement des besoins en investissements constitue une raison fondamentale pour laquelle les pays échangent les capitaux. Les données indiquent cependant que la dispersion des taux d'investissement est restée relativement stable au cours des récentes décennies. Pour réconcilier ces faits, je construis un modèle d'équilibre général dynamique et stochastique où les pays sont hétérogènes en raison des chocs idiosyncratiques à leurs niveaux de productivité totale des facteurs. Au niveau des marchés internationaux des capitaux, le menu des actifs disponibles est restreint à une obligation sans risque et il n'y a pas de mécanisme pour faire respecter les contrats de crédit entre pays. A tout moment, un pays peut choisir de résilier sa dette extérieure sous peine d'exclusion financière et d'un coût direct. Ce coût direct reflète les canaux autres que l'exclusion financière à travers lesquels les pays en défaut sont pénalisés. Lorsque le modèle est calibré pour reproduire l'évolution de la dispersion transversale des avoirs extérieurs nets, il produit une dispersion relativement stable des taux d'investissement. La raison principale est que les incitations que les pays ont à investir sont liées à la productivité. Avec l'intégration financière, même si les opportunités d'emprunt se sont multipliées, les incitations à investir n'ont pas beaucoup changé. Ce qui permet de générer une dispersion accrue de la position des avoirs extérieurs nets des pays avec une dispersion relativement stable des taux d'investissement. Le troisième essai analyse un aspect de l'interdépendance dans la formation des accords commerciaux préférentiels: j'examine empiriquement si le risque de diversion des exportations en faveur des pays membres des zones de commerce préférentiel est un facteur déterminant dans la décision des pays exclus de ces accords de négocier un accord à leur tour. Je construis un indicateur qui mesure le potentiel de diversion des exportations auquel font face les pays et estime un modèle probit de formation des zones de commerce préférentiel créées entre 1961 et 2005. Les résultats confirment que les pays confrontés à un plus grand potentiel de détournement des échanges sont plus susceptibles de former une zone de commerce préférentiel à leur tour. / This thesis consists of three essays in open economic macroeconomics and international trade. I consider the following questions: Which countries find it individually optimal to form an economic union? (essay 1); is the rising cross-sectional dispersion in net foreign asset positions consistent with a relatively stable dispersion in investment rates? (essay 2); is the risk of trade diversion due to existing preferential trade areas an important factor in excluded countries decision to seek one? (essay 3). The first essay studies the individual optimality of economic integration. It emphasizes the risk-sharing benefits of economic integration. In an initial situation, countries have very limited possibilities to share idiosyncratic endowment risk because of financial frictions: international financial markets are incomplete and contracts not enforceable. A union is an arrangement that solves both the market incompleteness and the lack of enforcement problems among member countries. The union as a whole still faces these frictions when trading in the world economy. The model emphasizes the following key trade-off. There are two benefits from economic integration: better risk-sharing among member countries and the possibility for poor partners to use the rich partners' credit lines. The costs are the following: borrowing limits become tighter because defaulting on international debt becomes less costly for union partners. Since poor partners may benefit from the rich partner's credit limit, this generates a negative externality: rich partners will find themselves more often borrowing-constrained in a union compared to standing alone in the world economy. Consistently with evidence on economic integration, the model predicts that economic unions occur relatively infrequently and are more likely to emerge among homogeneous and rich countries. The rising dispersion of external imbalances over the recent decades and the record-high levels reached by some major economies has received considerable attention during the recent years. The second essay focuses on one of such imbalances: the net foreign asset positions (NFA). One can view this rising dispersion as a consequence of the reduction in barriers to capital flows. But in such case, one would expect the dispersion in investment rates to go up as well because one fundamental reason countries borrow and lend internationally is to finance their investments needs. Instead, the dispersion in investment rates was relatively stable. To explain this puzzling fact, I undertake a quantitative analysis of the global dispersion of net foreign asset positions and investment rates. The framework is an integrated model of world economy where countries differences arise from idiosyncratic shocks to their total factor productivity levels. International capital flows is restricted: the menu of assets traded is exogenously restricted to a risk-free bond, and international lending contracts are not legally enforceable. At any time, a country may choose to repudiate its foreign debt subject to financial exclusion and an output cost. The output cost captures margins other than financial exclusion through which defaulting countries can be punished. When calibrated to match the evolution of the cross-sectional dispersion in net foreign asset positions, the model produces a relatively stable dispersion in investment rates. The reason is because the incentives to invest are related to the productivity, not to the borrowing and lending opportunities. Although the opportunities to borrow and lend internationally have increased, the incentives to invest have not changed much, thereby generating a large cross-sectional dispersion in NFA positions with a relatively stable dispersion in investment rates. The third essay investigates empirically whether the risk of trade diversion faced by countries excluded from preferential trade areas (PTA) is determinant in their decision to seek a preferential trade agreement. Using the trade complementarity index, I derive a measure of the potential of trade diversion and estimate a probit model of the formation of PTAs between 1961 and 2005. The results show that country-pairs facing a larger potential of trade diversion are more likely to form a PTA in the future.