This paper uses a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model to analyze the relationship between FDI inflows and output dynamics in a multi-country context. The GVAR model enables us to make two important contributions: First, to model international linkages among a large number of countries, which is a key asset given the diversity of countries involved, and second, to model foreign direct investment and output dynamics jointly. The country-specific small-dimensional vector autoregressive submodels are estimated utilizing a Bayesian version of the model coupled with stochastic search variable selection priors to account for model uncertainty. Using a sample of 15 emerging and advanced economies over the period 1998:Q1 to 2012:Q4, we find that US outbound FDI exerts a positive long-term effect on output. Asian and Latin American economies tend to react faster and also stronger than Western European countries. Forecast error variance decompositions indicate that FDI plays a prominent role in explaining GDP fluctuations, especially in emerging market economies. Our findings provide evidence for policy makers to design macroeconomic policies to attract FDI inflows in the respective countries. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

The study of the extent to which incoming FDI results in ‘spillovers’ (technology, R&D, management practices and know-how) has so far yielded only mixed results, and research has largely been restricted to north-north and north-south interactions; this study develops a model of knowledge spillovers based on previous literature and extends inquiry into south-south FDI by investigating spillovers from Chinese FDI to the Cambodian garment and light manufacturing industries. Several significant factors including the nature and extent of FDI linkages, local industry absorptive capacity, nature of the network relationship, and local firms’ learning orientation have been found to influence the extent to which knowledge spillovers occur. These variables are integrated within this paper which develops a conceptual model of knowledge spillovers based on the Awareness-Motivation- Capability framework to examine knowledge spillovers derived through both horizontal and vertical linkages. One area of interest examined in the study is the FDI influence on domestic firms’ export performance since light manufacturing represents the most significant portion of Cambodia's total export products. The thesis, addresses two primary questions: (1) when, where and under what conditions are significant knowledge spillovers created? And (2) what are the effects of the spillovers on domestic companies' technological capability and export performance? The research contributes to the previous literature by further developing the theory on the realisation of knowledge spillovers as well as exploring the nature and channels of knowledge spillovers from South-South FDI in labour-intensive industry, an area of study previously unexplored. Our results show that knowledge spillovers occur through both horizontal and vertical linkages and Cambodian firms receive more spillovers from Chinese FDI than they do from FDI from developed countries.

La mise en place de la politique monétaire non conventionnelle en 2008 aux États-Unis a coïncidé avec d'importants mouvements de capitaux et de taux de change dans les pays émergents. Ces derniers ont accusé la banque centrale américaine d'adopter une politique « d'appauvrissement du voisin » et de créer ces effets de report. En 2013, à la suite de l'annonce du ralentissement graduel du rythme de cette politique monétaire, certains pays émergents ont subi d'importantes crises financières. Dans ce contexte, cette thèse se propose d'étudier dans quelle mesure la politique monétaire non conventionnelle de la Réserve fédérale américaine a induit des effets de report en termes de mouvements de capitaux et de taux de change. Alors que la normalisation de cette politique monétaire est entamée, il est primordial de comprendre les implications internationales des décisions de la Réserve fédérale pour pouvoir contenir les risques potentiels. Tout d'abord, nous étudions les mécanismes et leurs effets sur les pays émergents dans le cadre d'une revue de la littérature. Nous montrons que la politique monétaire de la Réserve fédérale a bien été responsable d'effets de report. Ensuite, nous révélons, de façon empirique, que les conséquences présentent une certaine hétérogénéité dans le temps, en fonction des modalités d'intervention de la banque centrale américaine, ainsi que selon les pays. Nous établissons qu'il n'y a pas de réelle symétrie entre la phase expansionniste et celle de normalisation. De ce fait, la normalisation n'apparaît pas entrainer des reflux de capitaux dans les pays émergents. Finalement, nous nous intéressons aux moyens dont disposent les pays émergents pour limiter les effets de report. Nous montrons que les contrôles de capitaux et les politiques macroprudentielles peuvent permettre de réduire les mouvements de capitaux. Plus précisément, l'efficacité des contrôles de capitaux est conditionnée par leur accumulation. Plus le pays en est doté, plus il limite les effets de report. L'efficacité de la politique macroprudentielle dépend quant à elle de la qualité des institutions dans le pays émergent et de l'intensité de la politique monétaire américaine. / The implementation of the U.S. unconventional monetary policy in 2008 coincided with massive capital inflows and exchange rate appreciation for emerging markets. They implicate the Federal Reserve to pursue a « Beggar-thy-neighbor » policy and to create spillovers. In 2013, following the announcement of the « Tapering », some emerging markets suffered from significant financial crises. In this context, this thesis intends to study how the U.S. unconventional monetary policy led to capital flows and exchange rate movements spillovers. As the normalization of this monetary policy is initiated, understanding the international implications of the Federal Reserve's decisions is essential to contain potential risks. For this purpose, we firstly study mechanisms and their impacts on emerging countries by a literature review. We show that the Fed monetary policy caused capital flows and exchange rate spillovers in the last decade. Then, we reveal empirically that the impacts exhibit heterogeneity over time, depend on implementation modalities of the U.S. central bank as well as on the countries. We establish that there is no real symmetrical impacts between accommodative and normalization periods. As a result, the normalization would not lead to capital outflows in emerging countries. Finally, we examine the means that emerging countries can adopt to limit spillovers. We demonstrate that capital controls and macroprudential policies can be efficient to reduce capital inflows. More precisely, the effectiveness of capital controls is conditioned by their accumulation. The more the country adopts it, the more it limits spillovers. Considering macroprudential policies, the intensity of the U.S. monetary policy and the quality of the emerging countries' institutions are two main determinants of their effectiveness.

This doctoral thesis concerns the interplay between multinational enterprises (MNE) and spatial economies, with an orientation towards the location and spillover effects of inward foreign direct investments (FDI). The thesis consists of four essays that are self-contained studies. The first essay relates to the shift away from FDI in manufacturing to services and examines whether service FDI locates differently from manufacturing FDI. The second essay concerns the relationship between FDI and public incentives and whether investment promotion schemes are useful to attract FDI. The third essay examines the link between human capital and FDI and how different types of skilled workers influence FDI location. Taken together, these three essays examine conditions and factors that determine the location decision of foreign MNEs in the contemporary era of globalisation. The forth essay examines whether labour mobility is a potential source for spillovers from FDI in a spatial context. Although the latter essay does not provide any final answer to whether spillovers actually arise through this channel, it shows that the potentials for an effect to arise are larger in some regions than others because there are very few or no such knowledge spillover agents in many parts of the country. The thesis concludes by discussing the link between FDI and the policy work on regional development, and some avenues for future studies. / <p>QC 20130816</p>

R&D plays a dual role: First, it generates new knowledge and second, it develops a firm's absorptive capacity. Most of the existing strategic investment game models neglect, however, the second role of R&D. The aim of this paper is to incorporate the absorptive capacity hypothesis in such a model by endogenizing the spillover. A two-stage game is established and subsequently solved, looking for the subgame perfect Nash equilibria. Considering the comparative static properties of the model as well as the simulation results, a new effect appears: The "free-rider effect" of the models with exogenous spillover, which deteriorates the higher the spillover becomes, is now counteracted by the "absorptive capacity effect". It is found that firms will invest more in R&D to strengthen absorptive capacity when the spillover parameter is higher. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

This article presents a framework within which the effects of demographic change on both agglomeration and growth of economic activities can be analyzed. I introduce an overlapping generation structure into a New Economic Geography model with endogenous growth due to learning spillovers and focus on the effects of demographic structures on long-run equilibrium outcomes and stability properties. First, life-time uncertainty is shown to decrease long-run economic growth perspectives. In doing so, it also mitigates the pro-growth effects of agglomeration resulting from the localized nature of learning externalities. Second, the turnover of generations acts as a dispersion force whose anti-agglomerative effects are, however, dampened by the growth-linked circular causality being present as long as interregional knowledge spillovers are not perfect. Finally, lifetime uncertainty also reduces the possibility that agglomeration is the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

L'objectif de cette thèse est de déterminer les conditions pour lesquelles les politiques d'attraction des IDE des pays en voie de développement impactent leur niveau de croissance. Le cadre théorique est celui des nouveaux modèles de croissance endogène et le cadre empirique, celui de la Tunisie sur la période 1970-2009. Nous estimons un modèle composé de six équations simultanées reflétant la croissance de l'économie tunisienne. Ce modèle permet d'un côté d'évaluer l'impact des IDE sur le processus de croissance et de définir les conditions nécessaires qui assurent un bon fonctionnement des spillovers, et, d'un autre côté, de définir les facteurs déterminants des IDE localisés en Tunisie.Nous montrons notamment la nécessité pour la Tunisie de posséder une aptitude technologique et des ressources en capital humain qui conditionnent l'assimilation du savoir-faire et des technologies développées ailleurs. Nous mettons également en évidence l'importance d'autres facteurs liés notamment à l'environnement des affaires au sein d'un pays hôte. Ces différents facteurs assurent un bon fonctionnement des spillovers, qui en tant que canaux de transmission garantissent une croissance soutenue. Les pays en voie de développement devraient donc concentrer leurs efforts sur l'amélioration des politiques d'attraction des IDE et leur capacité d'absorption afin d'établir un environnement plus favorable à leur développement.

It has been argued that technology and productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment are the most important channels for the diffusion of modern technology to locally-owned firms in the MNCs’ host countries. Yet, existing empirical studies differ in their appraisals of the size and significance of spillovers. In this dissertation, we examine the technology imports of U.S. multinationals in 33 host countries, and more detailed information on foreign direct investment in Mexican manufacturing in 1970 and 1975, and propose – unlike earlier studies – that spillovers are not only exogenous effects of foreign presence, but also functions of various host country characteristics. We argue that the potential for spillovers from imitation of MNC technology depends on the technology imports of MNC affiliates – these, in turn, seem to be determined by factors such as the host country’s technological capability, the presence of technology transfer requirements, and the level of competition facing the affiliate. Some of the variables also appear to influence the local firms’ abilities and ambitions to imitate MNC technology. In addition, the effects of MNC presence on the level of competition (and the spillovers that occur when local firms are forced to become more efficient in order to maintain profits and market shares) are probably endogenously determined by the behavior of foreign affiliates and local firms: the two types of firms co-exist peacefully in some countries and industries, but compete fiercely in other locations. Consequently, spillovers may be important or insignificant depending on the characteristics of the host country. It is also possible that host country policies have some impact on spillovers. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.

Le sujet principal de cette thèse est de proposer de nouvelles méthodes d'extractions de signaux avec applications en finance. Par signaux, nous entendons soit un signal sur lequel repose une stratégie d'investissement; soit un signal perturbé par un bruit, que nous souhaitons retrouver. Ainsi, la première partie de la thèse étudie la contagion en volatilité historique autours des annonces de résultats des entreprises du Nasdaq. Nous trouvons qu'autours de l'annonce, l'entreprise reportant ses résultats, génère une contagion persistante en volatilité à l’encontre des entreprises appartenant au même secteur. Par ailleurs, nous trouvons que la contagion en volatilité varie, selon le type de nouvelles reportées, l'effet de surprise, ou encore par le sentiment de marché à l'égard de l'annonceur. La deuxième partie de cette thèse adapte des techniques de dé-bruitage venant de l'imagerie, à des formes de bruits présentent en finance. Ainsi, un premier article, co-écrit avec Matthieu Garcin, propose une technique de dé-bruitage innovante, permettant de retrouver un signal perturbé par un bruit à variance non-constante. Cet algorithme est appliqué en finance à la modélisation de la volatilité. Un second travail s'intéresse au dé-bruitage d'un signal perturbé par un bruit asymétrique et leptokurtique. En effet, nous adaptons un modèle de Maximum A Posteriori, couramment employé en imagerie, à des bruits suivant des lois de probabilité de Student, Gaussienne asymétrique et Student asymétrique. Cet algorithme est appliqué au dé-bruitage de prix d'actions haute-fréquences. L'objectif étant d'appliquer un algorithme de reconnaissance de formes sur les extrema locaux du signal dé-bruité. / The main objective of this PhD dissertation is to set up new signal extraction techniques with applications in Finance. In our setting, a signal is defined in two ways. In the framework of investement strategies, a signal is a function which generates buy/sell orders. In denoising theory, a signal, is a function disrupted by some noise, that we want to recover. A first part of this PhD studies historical volatility spillovers around corporate earning announcements. Notably, we study whether a move by one point in the announcer historical volatility in time t will generate a move by beta percents in time t+1. We find evidences of volatility spillovers and we study their intensity across variables such as : the announcement outcome, the surprise effect, the announcer capitalization, the market sentiment regarding the announcer, and other variables. We illustrate our finding by a volatility arbitrage strategy. The second part of the dissertation adapts denoising techniques coming from imagery : wavelets and total variation methods, to forms of noise observed in finance. A first paper proposes an denoising algorithm for a signal disrupted by a noise with a spatially varying standard-deviation. A financial application to volatility modelling is proposed. A second paper adapts the Bayesian representation of the Rudin, Osher and Fatemi approach to asymmetric and leptokurtic noises. A financial application is proposed to the denoising of intra-day stock prices in order to implement a pattern recognition trading strategy.

A década de oitenta, no Brasil, foi marcada por crises sucessivas da dívida externa, problemas inflacionários e baixas taxas de crescimento. Neste cenário, surgem idéias favoráveis à abertura da economia e em especial quanto ao Investimento Direto Estrangeiro (IDE), como forma se superar a restrição externa e possibilitar a retomada do crescimento econômico. Entretanto, também existiam justificativas de cunho mais microeconômico. Acreditava-se que as Empresas Nacionais (EN) sofreriam um choque de competitividade ao disputarem mercados com produtos importados de melhor qualidade e principalmente com o ingresso de Empresas Multinacionais (EMN) mais modernas e eficientes. Conseqüentemente, as EN iriam aumentar sua produtividade através do chamado efeito de transbordamento. As EMN, por serem muito eficientes, detentoras e desenvolvedoras de altas tecnologias de produção e técnicas de gestão modernas acabariam causando, de alguma forma, externalidades positivas às EN. Este fato teria como conseqüência o aumento da produtividade das EN. Neste contexto, o Brasil toma diversas medidas que favorecem o ingresso do IDE e a partir de meados da década de noventa passa a receber uma enorme quantidade deste capital, atingindo seu ápice no ano 2000. Entretanto, no início desta década o fluxo do IDE no Mundo e no Brasil apresentaram forte queda. Em 2003, o IDE retomou uma trajetória crescente mundial e o Brasil tem se destacado novamente na recepção deste tipo de capital. Este trabalho analisa os esforços de mensuração dos efeitos de transbordamentos do IDE sobre a produtividade das EN no Brasil. A análise toma por base as interpretações teóricas e empíricas sobre o tema no mundo e no Brasil. A despeito da identificação de alguns efeitos de transbordamentos positivos, ressaltam-se que as medidas tomadas em favor do IDE preocuparam-se basicamente em atraí-lo ao país. Neste sentido, fazemos uma discussão de proposições de políticas públicas e ações institucionais para potencializar as externalidades positivas do IDE sobre as EN no Brasil. / The eighteen decade, in Brazil, was marked by successive external debits crisis, inflationary problems and low rates of growth. In this scenario, thoughts favorable to openness of the economy emerge, in especial related to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), as a way of overcome the external restriction and make possible the return of the economic growth. However, there were justifications more related to microeconomics matters. It used to believe that Nationals Enterprises (NE) would suffer a competitive shock by fight for market-share with imported products of better quality and mainly with the ingress of Multinationals Enterprises (ME), more modern and efficient. Consequently, the NE would increase their productivity through the spillover effects. The ME, as a consequence of being very efficiencies, owner and developer of high of production technologies and modern manager techniques, would cause by some how positive externalities to the NE. This fact would result in the increase of productivity of the NE. In this context, Brazil took several steps to facilitate the ingress of FDI and since middles of the nineties decades started to receive a huge amount of the capital, heating its top in the year 2000. Nevertheless, at the beginning of this decade the flux of FDI in the World and in Brazil had a strong drop. In 2003, the FDI retook a growing trajectory worldly and Brazil has been outstanding again in the reception of this type of capital. This work analyses the efforts of measurement of the spillover effects of FDI in the productivities of NE in Brazil. The analysis takes in account the theoretical and empirical interpretations about the theme in the world and in Brazil. In spite of the identification of some positives spillover effects, we highlight that the measures took in favor to the FDI were basically worried in attract it to the country. In this sense, we discuss propositions of public politics and institutional actions to potentize FDI’s positives externalities over the NE in Brazil.