Very little has been written about the effect that oil prices have on manufacturing output in the United States. This paper aims to shed light about the effect of oil prices, oil imports, and GDP on U.S. manufacturing output through a four-variable vector autoregression and explain the timing of these shocks through impulse response functions. Empirical results find that oil prices are significant in determining manufacturing output, but manufacturing output is also significant in determining oil prices.

This thesis explores learning and formation of cognitive and non-cognitive skills within formal and non-formal environments, as well as the impact of migration on fertility behaviour in three separate empirical studies. In two of the papers (Chapters 2 and 4) I utilise a 13 year individual-level panel data-set from rural Tanzania, while the third one (Chapter 3) is based on cross-sectional data that I collected in urban Bombay slums in 2007. I consider skill acquisition and learning in a number of spheres. First, I adopt the conventional notion of school-based learning and examine the role of income shocks in evolution of schooling inequalities, in rural Tanzania. I find evidence of shock-induced permanent changes in the schooling of those affected by the shocks in later childhood (age 7-13), 10-13 years later. Further, I find suggestive evidence that the household short-term labour response may to be one of the mechanisms for these long-term effects. Next, I broaden the definition of learning to include acquisition of non-cognitive skills. Although there is growing recognition of the importance of these, there is no evidence, within a developing country context, on effectiveness of interventions targeting them. The second paper is an evaluation of a long-term non-formal schooling intervention in Bombay slums, which works on raising non-cognitive skills, including self-esteem, a sense of agency, and aspirations of children. It shows that, like cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills can be effectively raised through sustained intervention, offering evidence of substantial positive programme effects. The final paper turns to examining the impact of migration among young women on fertility behaviour. Econometric panel data methods are combined with an instrumenting strategy to offer evidence of a causal positive impact of migration on the age at which women start having children, which is shown to be likely to have permanent effects on total fertility. The findings are most consistent with the presence of temporary post migration disruption effects.

People who live in rural areas in low-income countries not only live in poverty, they also have to deal with an extremely variable income. In the absence of a well-functioning credit market, these fluctuations can be costly for households. This study aims to provide knowledge to the cost of these fluctuations, more precisely the study aims to answer how transitory weather shocks in Kenya affect children´s cognitive ability. Where weather shocks are assumed to be aggregated shocks that temporarily change the productivity in districts. The result from the study shows that drought, which can be seen as a negative shock, decrease the cognitive ability of children 11 to 16. The effect is marginally significant at the 10 percent level. No significant effect on cognitive ability is found for children aged 6 to 10. The result for older children is robust to alternative specifications. The study does not show any conclusive evidence on different effects on how boys and girls are affected by droughts.

After discussing the Malawian context and summarising the remittance research, I focus on remittances in rural Malawi. I follow remittances from the giver’s motivations through to the receiver’s view of remittances and how the receiver uses them and finally to their impact as a means of moderating the effect of negative shocks on the receiving household. Results show that parents remit to respondents for altruistic purposes, or for insurance motivations (e.g. to help out the respondent if they are sick). Respondents remit to parents for altruistic motivations and inheritance. There is strong bi-directionality in the remittance flows. Children remit to respondents as an “insurance premium”, and for inheritance motivations. Altruism motivates respondents to give to their children. There is strong evidence of co-insurance between respondents and their siblings with both insurance payouts and premiums being paid. Respondents and their siblings also remit to each other for altruistic motivations. There is strong evidence of “mental accounting” amongst both male and female headed households. Remittances exhibit a much lower MPC than salary and farming income. Male and female headed households differ in their use of income from different sources, however one result is consistent: remittances are used for education. Probit models indicate that households are more likely to receive remittances from local areas if someone in the household is sick (local remittances insure a health shock). Households that suffer from drought are more likely to receive remittances from more distant areas (other districts, a city, abroad). Drought has a major negative impact on consumption levels but distant remittances insure affected households who suffer from these. Local remittances, which make up most remittance flows, are unable to insure these community shocks. Only around 10 per cent of households receive remittances from outside their home district however. Remittances help to insure household consumption against health shocks, but only food consumption is insured.

This dissertation investigates agents’ behavior in a world with financial frictions such as financial regulations and information asymmetries. The three chapters of the dissertation are devoted to answering the following questions: Does financial regulation slow credit supply growth by imposing higher lending standards on banks? How does business volatility contribute to the declining firm entry rate in recent decades through credit channel? How does a financially distressed firm respond to risks when it is deemed "too big to fail"? Although widely acknowledged for enhancing financial stability, the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA) has continued to attract criticisms arguing that it contracts credit supply, and, as a consequence, reduces GDP and creates pressure on unemployment. In chapter I, I provide empirical and theoretical evidence on DFA’s negative impacts on credit supply. Based on a structural banking model, I find that DFA has reduced credit supply by at least 3.1% of the current volume of bank credit. This sizable loss partially validates the concern that the Wall Street reform put a strain on the economy and prevented it from fully recovering through credit channels. In chapter II, I present empirical and theoretical evidence suggesting that unexpected surging economic uncertainty hurts startups through credit channel: rising default rates accompanying heightened economic turbulence drive up credit spreads. With startups facing increasing funding costs, entry barriers go up and entry rates decline. Through simulations of an industry model incorporating dynamic entry and exit, I show that unexpected uncertainty shocks can generate larger and more persistent impact on economic outputs in a world with financial frictions than that without the frictions. In Chapter III, I argue that the risk-taking behavior of a financially distressed firm is exacerbated if the equity holders have larger bargaining power over debt holders. Using a firm’s valuation model which permits the endogenous default on the debt, I show that the threshold value triggering risk-taking behavior is positively related to the equity holders’ bargaining power in debt renegotiations. Therefore, firms anticipating a final bailout intentionally undertake more risky investments.

Since the Euro has founded in 1999, the Asian Currency has become an important issue. The most important prerequisite for adopting common currency for the countries in the area is the synchronization of business cycle. This paper analyses the degree and responses of business cycles for Asian countries when they face to the common shocks. The empirical findings from this paper can be summarized as follows. First, the shocks of Japanese economy are more important to Asian countries than the shocks from the United States, except for Thailand and Indonesia. Second, Malaysia and the Philippine are substantially influenced by the Thailand. Therefore, the Asian economy is evidently forming its regional (or bloc) economy continually. The findings from this paper are in the same line with the result from Hazel (2001), who concludes the business cycles of Japan and Korea are commoved. The degree of synchronization of business cycles for Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippine are quite high as well.

Traditional literature on energy economics gives a central role to exogenous political events (supply shocks) or to global economic growth (aggregate demand shock) in modeling the oil market. However, more recent literature claims that the increased precautionary demand for oil triggered by increased uncertainty about a future oil supply shortfall is also driving the price of oil. Based on this motivation, in the first chapter, we propose to build a DSGE model to explore macroeconomic consequences of precautionary demand motives in the crude oil market. The intuition behind the precautionary demand is that since firms, using oil as an input in their production process, are concerned about the future oil prices, it is reasonable to think that in the case of uncertainty about future oil supply (such as a highly expected war in the Middle East), they will buy futures and/or forward contracts to guarantee a future price and quantity. We simulate the effects of demand shocks in the oil market on macroeconomic variables, such as GDP and inflation. We find that under baseline Taylor-type interest rate rule, real oil price, inflation and output loss overshoot and go down below steady state at the next period if uncertainties are not realized. However, if the shock is realized, i.e. followed by an actual supply shock, the effect on inflation and output loss is high and persistent. Second chapter analyzes the effect of storage market on the monetary policy formulation as a response to an oil price shock. Some recent literature suggests that although high oil prices contributed to recessions, they have never had a pivotal role in the creation of those economic downturns. A general consensus is that the decline in output and employment was due to the rise in interest rates, resulting from the Fed’s endogenous response to the higher inflation induced by oil price shocks. However, traditional literature assumes that oil price shocks are exogenous to the U.S economy and they ignore the storage market for the crude oil. In this regard, a model with an endogenous (demand shock) or exogenous (supply shock) price shock may produce a totally different monetary policy proposal when there exists a market for storage for the crude oil. The rationale behind this idea is that when goods’ prices are sticky in the economy, the monetary authority can effect the level of inventories through the changes in the real interest rates. Thus, lower interest rate rules, as proposed in the literature, will cause additional oil supply scarcity in the spot market. Therefore, an optimal monetary policy that maximizes the welfare in the economy should consider the adverse affect of low interest rates on the crude oil market.

The Shocks and Difficulties of Young Managers in the Organizations Abstract Younger Organizations and Younger Managers are the trend in the world. The topic of Young Managers is also popular among people¡¦s talking, but there is no academic study about the related issue in Taiwan. This is an exploratory study, based on literatures to develop the questionnaires for quantitative studies. The targets of this study are 121 young managers who are 35-year-old below and supervise at least 2 direct report staffs. The data was analyzed by applying statistical methods, i.e., factor analysis, one-way ANOVA, descriptive statistics analysis, and correlation analysis. The purpose of the study is to find out the shocks and difficulties of young managers in the organizations, the relation of individual factors with the shocks and difficulties, the relations of ¡§the behaviors of the organizations¡¨ with the shocks and difficulties, as well as the relations of ¡§the behaviors of young managers¡¨ with the shocks and difficulties. Many important findings of this study are as below: Majority of young managers face the shocks and difficulties of ¡§Up & Peers Management¡¨, and sequently is ¡§Down Management¡¨, ¡§Professionalism & Authority be challenged¡¨, and ¡§People Management & Leadership¡¨. This study also found young managers in local companies have more difficulties in ¡§Down Management¡¨, ¡§People Management & Leadership¡¨, and ¡§Professionalism and Authority be challenged¡¨ then those who are working in foreign companies. Female young managers have more difficulties in ¡§Down Management¡¨ than males. Those young managers have been working with current supervisors for 1 ~ 3 years have more difficulties in ¡§People Management & Leadership¡¨ than those for over three years and below one year. Young Managers with over 10 years of working experience have less difficulty in ¡§People Management & Leadership¡¨ than those below 10 years of working experience. Young managers have more difficulties in ¡§Down Management¡¨ on staffs of college or lower education level than on those of university or graduate school. No matter what individual backgrounds or conditions the young managers have, their difficulties in ¡§Up & Peers Management¡¨ are the same. This study also found that if the organizations get the young managers involved in top management strategy will increase the young managers¡¦ difficulties in ¡§Down Management¡¨ and ¡§Up & Peers Management¡¨. If the organizations do too much job arrangement (e.g. workload, degree of working difficulty, and level of reporting line), it will increase the young managers¡¦ difficulties in ¡§Down Management¡¨ and ¡§People Management & Leadership¡¨. This study also found when young managers purposely build up their authority and professional image, their difficulties in ¡§Down Management¡¨, ¡§People Management & Leadership¡¨, ¡§Authority & Professionalism be challenged¡¨, and ¡§Up & Peers Management¡¨ are increasing. And if young managers manipulate power game too much, it will increase their difficulties in ¡§People Management & Leadership¡¨. This study also found it is great helpful for ¡§People Management & Leadership¡¨ if young managers can keep their physical in good condition and keep their information updated with the world and the market. Key words: young managers, shocks and difficulties, behaviors of the organizations, behaviors of the young managers.

This dissertation addresses the causes of and policy responses to the 1990s current account crises. The first chapter explores the relative importance of external shocks as key determinants of the significant increase of foreign reserves accumulated in many emerging market economies, and provides a comprehensive framework to assess the adequacy of reserve holdings. Using the case of Mexico, I find that more than two thirds of the increase in international reserves can be replicated by a linear combination of external shocks, without an abrupt regime shift after the Tequila crisis. I also find that Mexico has historically adopted an appropriate reserves policy, with 1994 being an exception. However, under the current reserves policy, there is a positive probability of a current account crisis in the near future. In chapter Two, I investigate the optimal reserves policy. The analysis predicts an optimal level of reserves in Mexico that is considerably higher than the actual level. When I account for the possibility of a bailout by the outside world in case of a crisis, Mexico's current reserves policy is in the range of my model's predictions. The final chapter proposes a new explanation for the existence and nature of sudden stops. In my model, a sudden stop forms a necessary solution to the moral hazard problem in investment and can be rationalized as part of an optimal lending strategy in the face of asymmetric information. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2009-08-13 22:52:26.219

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that acute alcohol consumption facilitates aggression through the reduction of adaptive anxiety/fear responses to danger/threat. Participants were 80 healthy male social drinkers between 21 and 33 years of age. They were randomly assigned to one of four groups: 1) Alcohol/anxiety induction (n=20), 2) Placebo/anxiety induction (n=20), 3) Alcohol only (n=20), and 4) Placebo only (n=20). Anxiety was induced by informing participants that they had to deliver a speech about what they liked and disliked about their body in front of a video camera. A modified version of the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (Taylor, 1967) was used to measure aggressive behavior in a situation where electric shocks were administered to, and received from, a fictitious opponent during a supposed competitive reaction-time task. Results indicated that the anxiety induction was successful in reducing aggression for participants who received alcohol. Results are discussed within the context of a number of theories specifying anxiety as a possible mediator of the alcohol aggression relation.