This dissertation mainly studies correlation and then portfolio analysis of financial contagion and capital flight, focusing on currency co-movements around the political uncertainty due to the Brexit referendum on 26 June 2016. The correlation, mean, and covariance computations in the analysis are both time-unconditional and time-conditional, and the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) methods are applied. The correlation analysis in this dissertation (Chapter 1) extends the previous literature on contagion testing based on a single global factor model, bivariate correlation analysis, and heteroskedasticity bias correction. Chapter 1 proposes an alternatively extended framework, assuming that intensification of financial correlations in a state of distress could coincide with rising global-factor-loading variability, provides simple tests to verify the assumptions of the literature and of the extended framework, and considers capital flight other than merely financial contagion. The outcomes show that, compared to the literature, the extended framework can be deemed more verified to the Brexit case. Empirically, with the UK being the shock-originating economy and the sterling value plummeting on the US dollar, there exist contagions to some other major currencies as well as a flight to quality, particularly to the yen, probably suggesting diversification benefits. When the correlation coefficients are time-conditional, or depend more on more recent data, the evidence shows fewer contagions and flights since the political uncertainty in question disappeared gradually over time. After relevant interest rates were partialled out, some previous statistical contagion and flight occurrences became less significant or even insignificant, possibly due to the significant impacts of the interest rates on the corresponding currency correlations. The portfolio analysis in this dissertation (Chapter 2) examines financial contagion and capital flight implied by portfolio reallocations through mean-variance portfolio analysis, and builds on the correlation analysis in Chapter 1. In the correlation analysis, correlations are bivariate, whereas in the portfolio analysis they are multivariate and the risk-return tradeoff is also vitally involved. Portfolio risk minimization and reward-to-risk maximization are the two analytical cases of portfolio optimality taken into consideration. Robust portfolio optimizations, using shrinkage estimations and newly proposed risk-based weight constraints, are also applied. The evidence demonstrates that the portfolio analysis outcomes regarding currency contagions and flights, implying diversification benefits, vary and are noticeably dissimilar from the correlation analysis outcomes of Chapter 1. Subsequently, it could be inferred that the diversification benefits deduced from the portfolio and correlation analyses differ owing to the dominance, during market uncertainty, of the behaviors of the means and (co)variances of all the shock-originating and shock-receiving returns, over the behaviors of just bivariate correlations between the shock-originating and shock-receiving returns. Moreover, corrections of the heteroskedasticity bias inherent in the shock-originating returns, overall, do not have an effect on currency portfolio rebalancing. Additionally, hedging demands could be implied from detected structural portfolio reallocations, probably as a result of variance-covariance shocks rising from Brexit. / This dissertation mainly studies correlation and then portfolio analysis of financial contagion and capital flight, focusing on currency co-movements around the political uncertainty due to the Brexit referendum on 26 June 2016. The correlation, mean, and covariance computations in the analysis are both time-unconditional and time-conditional, and the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) methods are applied. The correlation analysis in this dissertation (Chapter 1) extends the previous literature on contagion testing based on a single global factor model, bivariate correlation analysis, and heteroskedasticity bias correction. Chapter 1 proposes an alternatively extended framework, assuming that intensification of financial correlations in a state of distress could coincide with rising global-factor-loading variability, provides simple tests to verify the assumptions of the literature and of the extended framework, and considers capital flight other than merely financial contagion. The outcomes show that, compared to the literature, the extended framework can be deemed more verified to the Brexit case. Empirically, with the UK being the shock-originating economy and the sterling value plummeting on the US dollar, there exist contagions to some other major currencies as well as a flight to quality, particularly to the yen, probably suggesting diversification benefits. When the correlation coefficients are time-conditional, or depend more on more recent data, the evidence shows fewer contagions and flights since the political uncertainty in question disappeared gradually over time. After relevant interest rates were partialled out, some previous statistical contagion and flight occurrences became less significant or even insignificant, possibly due to the significant impacts of the interest rates on the corresponding currency correlations. The portfolio analysis in this dissertation (Chapter 2) examines financial contagion and capital flight implied by portfolio reallocations through mean-variance portfolio analysis, and builds on the correlation analysis in Chapter 1. In the correlation analysis, correlations are bivariate, whereas in the portfolio analysis they are multivariate and the risk-return tradeoff is also vitally involved. Portfolio risk minimization and reward-to-risk maximization are the two analytical cases of portfolio optimality taken into consideration. Robust portfolio optimizations, using shrinkage estimations and newly proposed risk-based weight constraints, are also applied. The evidence demonstrates that the portfolio analysis outcomes regarding currency contagions and flights, implying diversification benefits, vary and are noticeably dissimilar from the correlation analysis outcomes of Chapter 1. Subsequently, it could be inferred that the diversification benefits deduced from the portfolio and correlation analyses differ owing to the dominance, during market uncertainty, of the behaviors of the means and (co)variances of all the shock-originating and shock-receiving returns, over the behaviors of just bivariate correlations between the shock-originating and shock-receiving returns. Moreover, corrections of the heteroskedasticity bias inherent in the shock-originating returns, overall, do not have an effect on currency portfolio rebalancing. Additionally, hedging demands could be implied from detected structural portfolio reallocations, probably as a result of variance-covariance shocks rising from Brexit.

Questa tesi include tre capitoli che si concentrano sulle politiche pubbliche e la tutela della salute. Il primo capitolo esamina l’effetto dell’incremento delle aliquote dell’IVA su alcune bevande sul loro consumo. I risultati dell’analisi empirica suggeriscono che l'aumento dell'aliquota IVA ha ridotto il consumo di alcolici, birra e bevande gassate, mentre l’effetto sul consumo di vino non è statisticamente significativo. Tuttavia, questo risultato generale cambia se si considerano sotto-gruppi di individui. Il secondo capitolo studia l’impatto del salario minimo sulla salute della popolazione cinese. Le stime indicano che i salari minimi reali sono negativamente e significativamente correlati con lo stato di salute della popolazione sia nel breve che nel lungo periodo, un risultato che potrebbe essere spiegato dalle condizioni di lavoro più stressanti conseguenti all’introduzione di un salario minimo più elevato. Infine, il terzo capitolo analizza gli effetti dei meccanismi di incentivazione sui comportamenti degli operatori sanitari del settore delle cure primarie nell’ambito della gestione dell'ipertensione. La nostra indagine empirica suggerisce che gli incentivi finanziari negativi potrebbero motivare gli operatori sanitari a migliorare la qualità dei servizi legati alla gestione dell'ipertensione, mentre né gli incentivi finanziari né diverse modalità di valutazione delle prestazioni sembrano influenzare la qualità dei servizi. / This dissertation includes three chapters which focus on the relationship between public policies and healthcare. The first chapter examines whether tax policy is effective in changing the unhealthy drinking behaviours of individuals. My findings suggest that the VAT rate increase is effective in reducing the consumption of spirits, beer and carbonated beverages, while it is not effective for wine. However, this general result change when looking at sub-groups of individuals. The second chapter studies how real minimum wages affect population health in China. I conclude that real minimum wages are negatively and significantly related to population health, a result which might be explained by the role of more stressful working conditions as a consequence of a higher minimum wage. Finally, the third chapter analyses the effects of incentive mechanisms on the behaviours of primary health workers and the subsequent effects on the quality of hypertension management. The empirical investigation suggests that negative financial incentives could motivate primary health workers and improve the quality of hypertension management. However, neither positive financial incentives nor different modes of performance evaluation are significantly related to the quality of hypertension management.

Questa tesi, strutturata in tre documenti autonomi ma logicamente connessi, si propone di analizzare alcuni problemi, idee e prospettive relativi allo sviluppo. In particolare, il primo documento “Sviluppo e paradigmi di sviluppo: un’analisi delle visioni prevalenti” fornisce un quadro comparativo dei principali modelli di sviluppo adottati da diversi paesi (visione, azioni specifiche e processi di attuazione) e ne evidenzia specificità, analogie e differenze. Il secondo documento: “Analisi d’impatto delle politiche de degli shocks dei prezzi internazionali: Modelli CGE per un paese non industrializzato importatore netto di petrolio e dipendente dagli aiuti esterni”, mette in luce come le informazioni utilizzabili nei processi di formulazione delle politiche che si ottengono da un modello CGE dipendano sia dalle assunzioni relative alla struttura del modello che dalla struttura del sistema economico oggetto dell’indagine. In particolare, le variazioni del tasso di cambio reale si ripercuotono sul resto del sistema tanto più, quanto più il paese riceve finanziamenti ed aiuti dall’estero. Il terzo documento “Shocks dei prezzi internazionali in Burkina Faso: valutazione degli impatti socio-economici con modelli CGE” si propone di valutare l’impatto degli shocks dei prezzi internazionali di prodotti alimentari, petrolio, fertilizzanti e cotone, avvenuti nella prima decade degli anni 2000, sul sistema socio-economico del Burkina Faso, esempio di paese non industrializzato importatore netto di petrolio e dipendente dagli aiuti esteri. Da una lettura complessiva dei tre documenti emerge che, per assicurare uno sviluppo globale sostenibile nel lungo periodo, alla luce dei problemi di sviluppo emergenti e dei vincoli globali quali il vincolo energetico, i cambiamenti climatici, le disuguaglianze, i conflitti e le migrazioni è necessario rivedere la maggior parte dei paradigmi di sviluppo adottati finora. / This thesis, structured in three individual but logically interlinked papers aims at addressing select development issues, ideas and perspectives. More specifically, the first paper “Development and development paradigms: a (reasoned) review of prevailing visions” provides a comparative analysis of the prevailing development models adopted by different countries (visions, specific actions and implementation processes) and highlights their analogies, differences and specificities. The second paper “Analyzing policy impacts and international price shocks: Alternative Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models for an aid-dependent less-industrialized country”, highlights how relevant information for policy making obtained by CGE models depend both on the assumptions regarding the structure of the model and on the structure of the socio-economic system under investigation. More specifically, the more the country receives foreign grants and loans, the more the variations of the real exchange rate due to price shocks affect the country’s socio-economic system. The third document “International price shocks in Burkina Faso: assessing development impacts with a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) approach” assesses the impact of the international price shocks of food, oil, fertilizers and cotton, occurred in the first decade of the new millennium, on Burkina Faso, a less-industrialized oil-dependent and foreign aid-dependent country. Reading across the three papers of this work, it emerges that, to achieve globally equitable and sustainable development objectives, in the light of the emerging issues and global constraints such as exhaustible fossil energy, climate changes, inequalities conflicts and migrations, it is necessary revising most of the development paradigms adopted so far.