Στην παρούσα διατριβή αναπτύσσεται ένα ολοκληρωμένο μεθοδολογικό πλαίσιο για την ανάλυση της παραγωγικής αποτελεσματικότητας επιχειρήσεων που λειτουργούν σε περιβάλλον πολλαπλής τεχνολογικής ετερογένειας. Με βάση την έννοια των μετα-μεταορίων, ορίζονται μέτρα αποτελεσματικότητας και τεχνολογικών χασμάτων σε κάθε επίπεδο τεχνολογικής ετερογένειας, τα οποία, σε ένα δεύτερο στάδιο, «αποδομούνται» σε παράγοντες σταθερούς ως προς τις εισροές και παράγοντες σταθερούς ως προς τις εκροές. Η προτεινόμενη μεθοδολογία χρησιμοποιείται για την διερεύνηση της παραγωγικής αποτελεσματικότητας των ευρωπαϊκών τραπεζικών επιχειρήσεων, λαμβάνοντας υπόψη πιθανή τεχνολογική ετερογένεια που οφείλεται στα ιδιαίτερα χαρακτηριστικά (i) των εθνικών τραπεζικών συστημάτων και (ii) των τραπεζικών τύπων ειδίκευσης. Οι επιδράσεις των εν λόγω πηγών τεχνολογικής ετερογένειας στην τραπεζική αποτελεσματικότητα εξετάζονται ξεχωριστά, σε ένα πλαίσιο ανάλυσης τεχνολογικής ετερογένειας ενός επιπέδου, και συνδυαστικά, σε ένα πλαίσιο ανάλυσης ιεραρχημένης τεχνολογικής ετερογένειας δύο επιπέδων. Τα αποτελέσματα της σχετικής εμπειρικής ανάλυσης ερμηνεύονται με βάση την «θεωρία της γνώσης», δίνοντας ιδιαίτερη έμφαση στον ρόλο της διάχυσης της γνώσης, της ικανότητας απορρόφησης και του στρατηγικού προσανατολισμού των ευρωπαϊκών τραπεζικών επιχειρήσεων. / In the context of the present thesis, a methodological framework is developed for analysing the productive efficiency of firms that operate in a multilevel technologically heterogeneous environment. Based on the meta-metafrontier notion, efficiency and technology gaps measures are defined at each level of technology heterogeneity and are decomposed into input- and output-invariant components. The proposed methodology is used for the investigation of productive efficiency of European banking firms, taking into account potential technology heterogeneity due to the particular characteristics of (i) the national banking systems and (ii) the specialization types of banking firms. The effects of the aforementioned heterogeneity sources on bank efficiency are examined separately, in a single-level technology heterogeneity framework, and simultaneously, in a hierarchical technology heterogeneity framework of two levels. The results of the relevant empirical analysis are interpreted using the “knowledge-based theory”, emphasising on the role of knowledge spillovers, the banking firms’ absorptive capacity and strategic orientation.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-09-23T13:47:58Z No. of bitstreams: 1 mariavivianadefreitascabral.pdf: 1518709 bytes, checksum: 45ae2add71844fef3522958570ca30c6 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Diamantino Mayra (mayra.diamantino@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-09-26T20:30:51Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 mariavivianadefreitascabral.pdf: 1518709 bytes, checksum: 45ae2add71844fef3522958570ca30c6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-26T20:30:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 mariavivianadefreitascabral.pdf: 1518709 bytes, checksum: 45ae2add71844fef3522958570ca30c6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016 / A reversão dos índices de crime no estado de São Paulo tem despertado o interesse dos pesquisadores em verificar as possíveis causas para a redução de 67,1% nas taxas de homicídios no período de 2000 a 2010. Diversos fatores têm sido apontados para explicar esse fenômeno, porém não foi encontrado na literatura, até o momento, estudos que avaliassem o Sistema de Informações Criminais – INFOCRIM, adotado por 67 municípios paulistas até o ano de 2010. Desse modo, este trabalho tem o objetivo de testar a hipótese de que o INFOCRIM tenha contribuído para a redução das taxas de homicídios entre 2000 e 2010, controlando por diversos determinantes do crime e por outras iniciativas de segurança pública. Para isso, foi realizada uma avaliação de tratamento por meio da abordagem das diferenças-em-diferenças espacial (SDID), método pioneiro capaz de modelar a migração do crime das regiões tratadas para regiões vizinhas. O grupo de tratamento foi definido como os 67 municípios contemplados pelo INFOCRIM, ao passo que o grupo de controle foi definido como os 548 municípios paulistas remanescentes na amostra. Por meio de um painel de dados de dois períodos (2000 e 2010), o modelo de defasagem espacial (SDID-SAR) evidenciou a existência de transbordamentos espaciais (migração de crime) entre os municípios paulistas e um efeito redutor do crime devido ao INFOCRIM. Em termos de efeitos totais, o INFOCRIM reduziu a taxa de homicídios em 6,183 entre 2000 e 2010. Quanto aos efeitos diretos, o Programa reduziu a taxa de homicídios em 3,745, enquanto, em termos de efeitos indiretos, o INFOCRIM diminuiu a taxa de homicídios em 2,437 durante esse período. Isso implica que a interação espacial existente entre os agentes reforçou o efeito médio do INFOCRIM. Os resultados corroboraram a relação positiva entre crime e desemprego e a relação inversa entre crime e educação. A melhoria da equidade social contribuiu para a redução da criminalidade violenta enquanto o adensamento populacional apresentou sinal contrário ao esperado. Há um efeito dissuasor indireto sobre as taxas de homicídios decorrente da existência de guarda municipal armada. Em termos de vidas poupadas, o Estado de São Paulo foi capaz de minimizar os prejuízos sociais decorrentes da criminalidade, uma vez que a implementação do INFOCRIM evitou 2.546 homicídios de 2000 até 2010. Portanto, o INFOCRIM pode ser considerado um Programa exitoso no combate à criminalidade letal. / The reversal of the trend of crime rates in the state of São Paulo has arisen the interest of researchers to verify the possible causes for the reduction of 67.1% in homicide rate from 2000 to 2010. Several factors have been suggested to explain this phenomenon, but it was not found in the literature, so far, researches to evaluate the Criminal Information System – INFOCRIM, adopted by 67 municipalities in São Paulo until 2010. Thus this work is aimed at testing the hypothesis that INFOCRIM has contributed to the reduction in homicide rate between 2000 and 2010, controlling for determinants of crime and other public security actions. To do so, a treatment evaluation is performed using the spatial difference-in- differences (SDID) approach, a pioneering method able to model the crime migration from the treated regions to their neighboring regions. The treatment group is defined as being the 67 municipalities with INFOCRIM whereas the control group is defined as being 548 municipalities remaining in the sample. Using two-period panel data (2000 and 2010), the spatial lag model (SDID-SAR) indicated the existence of spatial spillovers (crime migration) among municipalities in the São Paulo state and a crime reducing effect of INFOCRIM. As to total effects, INFOCRIM reduced homicide rate by 6.183 over the period 2000-2010. In terms of direct terms, the program decreased homicide rate by 3.745, while, in terms of indirect effects, INFOCRIM reduced homicide rate by 2.437 during this period. . This implies that the spatial interaction between agents enhanced the average effect of INFOCRIM. These findings confirmed the positive relation between crime and unemployment and the inverse relation between crime and education. The improvement of social equity contributed to the reduction of violent crime while the population density showed a sign contrary to theoretically expected. There is an indirect effect on homicide rate due to the existence of municipal guard. In terms of lives saved, the Government of the State of São Paulo was able to minimize the social loss from offenses, since the implementation of INFOCRIM has avoided 2,546 homicides over the period 2000-2010. Therefore, the INFOCRIM can be considered successful in fighting lethal crime.

Innovation incentives are imperfectly provided in market settings: When deciding on their innovation activity, firms tend to focus on the maximization of their private benefits, poorly internalizing social benefits. This thesis analyzes how policy intervention could be designed in order to align private and social incentives. <p><p>In the three papers of this thesis, I will consider three environments where firms' choices in a laissez-faire situation may be socially inefficient. The inefficiencies arise because of learning externalities, free riding when the innovation decision is made by a group of participants, or because firms are not willing to invest in a new activity that has a higher social than private value.<p><p>In the first thesis paper, I deal with the strategies of firms in innovative consumer product markets characterized by demand uncertainty. I analyze the timing and location decision of firms in that context.<p><p>In the second thesis paper, I consider the investment incentives of financial market infrastructures (FMIs). FMIs comprise the set of institutions that allow financial market participants to engage with each other. I assess the innovation incentives for different forms of ownership (user-owned versus third-party owned) and identify infrastructure service provision equilibria. <p><p>In the third thesis paper, I address the question of how a government should allocate a subsidy budget over time in order to maximize the innovation activity in an industry. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The dissertation suggests that geographical, institutional, religious and cultural links may be determinants of growth. We address a number of issues in this thesis. The starting point is naturally a study on growth, while the main focus is on the analysis of inequalities between countries with respect to their environment, and also on inequalities within countries.<p>The very first step of the study, presented in Chapter one, is to build such non-physical relations between countries. In this chapter, we present both the choices and methods used to model the institutional and cultural weights matrices. Chapter 1 also presents a comparative study between the different matrices built. The final aim of this chapter is to identify the differences between the geographical, institutional and cultural environment.<p>The following chapter incorporates these innovative new types of matrices in a study on growth. An externality growth model is therefore developed that takes proximities between entities into account, whether geographical, institutional or cultural. The purpose of the chapter is threefold. First, it compares the results obtained from spatial econometrics methods with classical regression, where observations of growth are considered as independent. Second, it examines whether the development of an externality model improves the quality of the estimation. Third, it investigates whether the institutional and cultural types of proximity make sense compared to the geographical one.<p>Chapter 3 narrows the analysis of countries’ dependency with regard to their neighborhood, whether geographical, institutional or religious, and a quintile regression approach allows us to check whether the countries' wealth level matters. Do the poorest countries react in the same way as richer ones regarding the wealth of their geographical, institutional and religious neighbors? The gross impact of neighboring wealth on a country’s wealth is then estimated, and some relative effects of the three matrices combined are also shown, as well as the robustness of the estimates.<p><p>Finally, Chapter 4 analyzes the dependence of poverty regarding neighborhood. The relative wealth and poverty of the neighborhood are examined as factors that can influence a country’s poverty level. The poverty index used is the proportion of people living on less than one or two dollars a day. The study only considers the developing countries as data for the developed countries on the proportion of this variable is near zero. Once again, the final aim is to check whether a country’s poverty is exacerbated by its geographical, institutional and religious neighborhood poverty or if it takes advantage of neighborhood wealth to manage its own poverty issues.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Cette thèse analyse l’impact des facteurs institutionnels et de la gouvernance sur l’investissement privé dans les pays en développement. La problématique de la « bonne gouvernance » et de l’amélioration de la qualité institutionnelle notamment dans les pays en développement sont au coeur des préoccupations de la communauté internationale. Pour autant, il n’existe pas un cadre institutionnel et un système de gouvernance unique et optimal qui s’imposeraient de manière exogène à tous les pays, car les facteurs culturels, historiques et anthropologiques modèlent la qualité des institutions et le mode de gouvernance. En effet, si les pays peuvent avoir un objectif commun, celui d’un cadre institutionnel permettant notamment de garantir la viabilité et la crédibilité du climat d’investissement, ils démarrent tous de points différents, marqués par des caractéristiques propres.Ces facteurs nous emmènent à privilégier une approche relativiste et non normative de la qualité des institutions et de la gouvernance. Cependant,tous les cadres institutionnels ne se valent pas. Certaines configurations institutionnelles accroissent l’incertitude et l’irréversibilité de l’investissement. Nos analyses placent le déficit de gouvernance et la faiblesse des institutions au cœur de la problématique de l’incertitude et de l’irréversibilité de l’investissement dans les pays en développement. Nous adoptons dans cette thèse une démarche plurielle consistant en une analyse macroéconométrique qui permet d’apprécier le comportement de l’investissement au niveau agrégé, et une analyse microéconométrique qui a l’intérêt de prendre en compte l’hétérogénéité des comportements d’investissement des entreprises. Un accent particulier est porté à l’Afrique subsaharienne qui est la région ayant le plus faible taux d’investissement. / This thesis analyzes the impact of governance and institutions on private investment in developing countries. "Good governance" and institutional quality especially in developing countries are of great concern to the international community. However, there is no unique and optimal institutional framework and governance system which can be set up in all countries independently to their cultural, historical and anthropological characteristics. Indeed, if all countries can share a common objective which consists of an institutional framework, able to ensure the sustainability and credibility of the investment climate, they will all start from different points with specific characteristics. These factors lead us to favor a non normative approach of the quality of institutions and governance. However, some institutional framework increases uncertainty and irreversibility ofinvestment. In this thesis, we consider weak institutions and poor governance as the main sources of uncertainty and irreversibility of investment indeveloping countries. We use a macroeconometric approach which analyses the investment behavior at the aggregate level, and a microeconometric approach which takes into account the heterogeneity of the investment behavior of firms. An emphasis is put on sub-Saharan African countries that have the lowest private investment rate.

犯罪行為受到警力或法律執行的影響，會移動到鄰近警力較差地區。正如 Gylys所說：考量一個地區警力的多寡，將受到其他鄰近區域警力的影響 很大。Mehay亦認為：從實際經驗上來看，對於移動性的犯罪(如搶劫、縱 火、偷竊等)，外部支配型式力量(如警力)的適當增加，將迫使其外溢( spillovers)至鄰近區域。利用空間統計的自我迴歸模式，我們可以更了 解移動性犯罪受到相連區域自我相關的影響。即使相關性不高，在作了差 分之後，其主成分分析最大負載變數項，變化相當大。所以資料裡，如果 有區域自我相關的情形，就應該謹慎處裡。

Si presentano un saggio empirico e due modelli teorici originali sul rapporto tra geografia economica e crescita. Nel saggio empirico si presentano alcuni fatti stilizzati sull'evoluzione della concentrazione spaziale delle attività innovative in Italia nel periodo 1971-2001. Si mostra, con metodologie non-parametriche su base markoviana, come la concentrazione spaziale sia diminuita nel tempo, con una persistenza del Core di regioni specializzate. Nel primo saggio teorico si propone un modello di crescita romeriana e localizzazione caratterizzato da costi di congestione. È possibile, in questo caso, un processo di divergenza e agglomerazione non permanente. Nel secondo saggio teorico si mostra come le predizioni principali dei modelli di geografia e crescita si estendano anche ad un modello di crescita schumpeteriana. / I present one empirical and two theoretical models on the relationship between geography and growth. in the empirical paper, I present some stylized facts on the evolution of the spatial concentration of innovative activities in Italy in the period 1971-2001. Using markov-based non parametric techniques, I show that spatial concentration decreased but regional specialization is highly persistent. in the first theoretical paper, I present a model of romerian growth and industrial location characterized by congestion costs. I show how a process of agglomeration and divergence might be reverted once trade integration deepens. in the second theoretical paper, I show how usual predictions of the geography and growth models apply to a Schumpeterian growth model.

This doctoral thesis addresses in a sequence of five essays the question how fiscal policy and economic output are interrelated in emerging Europe and how this relationship is shaped by the respective politico-economic environment and the individual-level support for economic reforms. Following main findings can be highlighted: (1) Countries in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) respond to a fiscal expansion in the euro area with fiscal easing at home, while the GDP response is mixed across countries.(2)Automatic fiscal stabilizers are comparatively small and discretionary fiscal policy has been largely pro-cyclical in CESEE. (3) The public spending and revenue structure is more "growth-friendly" in CESEEthan in the EU-15. (4) In transition economies with more democratic institutions and a better quality of governance, individuals with high market-relevant skills show a significantly larger support of the privatization status quo than individuals with low market skills. (5) The society in Russia - triggered by a lack of social capital - chooses to demand more state regulationand tolerate corruption to reduce negative externalities imposed by private business.(author's abstract)

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No. of bitstreams: 1 GAZONATO_Mariana_2016.pdf: 1296907 bytes, checksum: e818dc5345f193f3602ce7d5770cd476 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-03 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / The main purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the capacity of sectors of the Brazilian economy to tranfer their productivity gains over the production chain, in the period 2000-2009. In this way, an adjustment is performed, through the structural decomposition technique of the input-output analysis of Dietzenbacher and Los (1998), of the method proposed by Greenhalgh e Gregory (2000). The fundamental assumptions, based on the structuralist current, are that the Industry tends to have larger increases in productivity and linkages with other segments of the economy, especially when compared to the Services. Together, these attributes would make that the productivity gains of the industrial sector propagate more intensely by the productive chain. The results show that in the period analyzed, the Agricultural and Services were the primarily responsible for transmiting these increments for the rest of the economy, instead of Industry, which moved forward losses of productivity. However, despite the Services have become more productive and transferred these gains over the production chain, the average transmission power of its segments was relatively low compared to the Industry's ability to transmit forward its productivity losses. This is because a considerable portion of the increments of the tertiary sector occurred in Personal Services, segment with reduced links in the production chain and whose goods meet, mainly, the individual consumer. The fact that the Industry ´s power transmission is, on average, higher than that of Services implies that if the industrial sector had increase its productivity, rather than decrease it, greater productivity gains would have been transmitted to the other segments of the economy that have been verified by the productivity gains of Services. However, it is important to stress that certain activities of the tertiary sector showed high potential to transfer these increments. This was the case of the Knowledge-Intensive Business Services. / O objetivo principal desta dissertação é analisar a capacidade dos setores da economia brasileira de transferir seus ganhos de produtividade ao longo da cadeia produtiva, no período 2000-2009. Neste sentido, é realizada uma adaptação, por meio da técnica de decomposição estrutural da análise de insumo-produto de Dietzenbacher e Los (1998), do método proposto por Greenhalgh e Gregory (2000). As hipóteses fundamentais, baseadas na corrente estruturalista, são de que a Indústria tende a apresentar maiores incrementos de produtividade e relações de encadeamento com os demais segmentos da economia, especialmente quando comparadas aos Serviços. Juntos, tais atributos fariam com que com os ganhos de produtividade do setor industrial se espraiassem mais intensamente pela cadeia produtiva.Os resultados apontam que no período analisado,a Agropecuária e os Serviços foram os principais responsáveis por transmitirem este sincrementos para o restante da economia, em detrimento da Indústria, a qual transferiu para frente perdas de produtividade. No entanto, apesar dos Serviços terem se tornado mais produtivos e transferido estes ganhos ao longo da cadeia produtiva, o poder de transmissão médio dos seus segmentos mostrou-se relativamente baixo quando comparado à capacidade da Indústria transmitir para frente suas perdas de produtividade. Isto porque parcela considerável dos incrementos do setor terciário ocorreu nos Serviços Pessoais, segmento com reduzidos elos na cadeia produtiva e cujos bens atendem, majoritariamente, o consumidor individual. O fato do poder de transmissão da Indústria ser, na média,superior ao dos Serviços, implica que se o setor industrial tivesse elevado sua produtividade, ao invés de diminuí-la, maiores ganhos de produtividade teriam sido transbordados para os outros segmentos da economia do que foram verificados pelo aumento da produtividade dos Serviços. É importante ressaltar, no entanto, que determinadas atividades do setor terciário apresentaram elevado potencial de transferir estes incrementos. Este foi o caso dos Serviços Empresariais Intensivos em Conhecimento.

The active use of macroeconomic policies to smooth economic fluctuations and, as a<p>consequence, the stance that policymakers should adopt over the business cycle, remain<p>controversial issues in the economic literature.<p>In the light of the dramatic experience of the early 1930s’ Great Depression, Keynes (1936)<p>argued that the market mechanism could not be relied upon to spontaneously recover from<p>a slump, and advocated counter-cyclical public spending and monetary policy to stimulate<p>demand. Albeit the Keynesian doctrine had largely influenced policymaking during<p>the two decades following World War II, it began to be seriously challenged in several<p>directions since the start of the 1970s. The introduction of rational expectations within<p>macroeconomic models implied that aggregate demand management could not stabilize<p>the economy’s responses to shocks (see in particular Sargent and Wallace (1975)). According<p>to this view, in fact, rational agents foresee the effects of the implemented policies, and<p>wage and price expectations are revised upwards accordingly. Therefore, real wages and<p>money balances remain constant and so does output. Within such a conceptual framework,<p>only unexpected policy interventions would have some short-run effects upon the economy.<p>The "real business cycle (RBC) theory", pioneered by Kydland and Prescott (1982), offered<p>an alternative explanation on the nature of fluctuations in economic activity, viewed<p>as reflecting the efficient responses of optimizing agents to exogenous sources of fluctuations, outside the direct control of policymakers. The normative implication was that<p>there should be no role for economic policy activism: fiscal and monetary policy should be<p>acyclical. The latest generation of New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium<p>(DSGE) models builds on rigorous foundations in intertemporal optimizing behavior by<p>consumers and firms inherited from the RBC literature, but incorporates some frictions<p>in the adjustment of nominal and real quantities in response to macroeconomic shocks<p>(see Woodford (2003)). In such a framework, not only policy "surprises" may have an<p>impact on the economic activity, but also the way policymakers "systematically" respond<p>to exogenous sources of fluctuation plays a fundamental role in affecting the economic<p>activity, thereby rekindling interest in the use of counter-cyclical stabilization policies to<p>fine tune the business cycle.<p>Yet, despite impressive advances in the economic theory and econometric techniques, there are no definitive answers on the systematic stance policymakers should follow, and on the<p>effects of macroeconomic policies upon the economy. Against this background, the present thesis attempts to inspect the interrelations between macroeconomic policies and the economic activity from novel angles. Three contributions<p>are proposed. <p><p>In the first Chapter, I show that relying on the information actually available to policymakers when budgetary decisions are taken is of fundamental importance for the assessment of the cyclical stance of governments. In the second, I explore whether the effectiveness of fiscal shocks in spurring the economic activity has declined since the beginning of the 1970s. In the third, the impact of systematic monetary policies over U.S. industrial sectors is investigated. In the existing literature, empirical assessments of the historical stance of policymakers over the economic cycle have been mainly drawn from the estimation of "reduced-form" policy reaction functions (see in particular Taylor (1993) and Galì and Perotti (2003)). Such rules typically relate a policy instrument (a reference short-term interest rate or an indicator of discretionary fiscal policy) to a set of explanatory variables (notably inflation, the output gap and the debt-GDP ratio, as long as fiscal policy is concerned). Although these policy rules can be seen as simple approximations of what derived from an explicit optimization problem solved by social planners (see Kollmann (2007)), they received considerable attention since they proved to track the behavior of central banks and fiscal<p>policymakers relatively well. Typically, revised data, i.e. observations available to the<p>econometrician when the study is carried out, are used in the estimation of such policy<p>reaction functions. However, data available in "real-time" to policymakers may end up<p>to be remarkably different from what it is observed ex-post. Orphanides (2001), in an<p>innovative and thought-provoking paper on the U.S. monetary policy, challenged the way<p>policy evaluation was conducted that far by showing that unrealistic assumptions about<p>the timeliness of data availability may yield misleading descriptions of historical policy.<p>In the spirit of Orphanides (2001), in the first Chapter of this thesis I reconsider how<p>the intentional cyclical stance of fiscal authorities should be assessed. Importantly, in<p>the framework of fiscal policy rules, not only variables such as potential output and the<p>output gap are subject to measurement errors, but also the main discretionary "operating<p>instrument" in the hands of governments: the structural budget balance, i.e. the headline<p>government balance net of the effects due to automatic stabilizers. In fact, the actual<p>realization of planned fiscal measures may depend on several factors (such as the growth<p>rate of GDP, the implementation lags that often follow the adoption of many policy<p>measures, and others more) outside the direct and full control of fiscal authorities. Hence,<p>there might be sizeable differences between discretionary fiscal measures as planned in the<p>past and what it is observed ex-post. To be noted, this does not apply to monetary policy<p>since central bankers can control their operating interest rates with great accuracy.<p>When the historical behavior of fiscal authorities is analyzed from a real-time perspective, it emerges that the intentional stance has been counter-cyclical, especially during expansions, in the main OECD countries throughout the last thirteen years. This is at<p>odds with findings based on revised data, generally pointing to pro-cyclicality (see for example Gavin and Perotti (1997)). It is shown that empirical correlations among revision<p>errors and other second-order moments allow to predict the size and the sign of the bias<p>incurred in estimating the intentional stance of the policy when revised data are (mistakenly)<p>used. It addition, formal tests, based on a refinement of Hansen (1999), do not reject<p>the hypothesis that the intentional reaction of fiscal policy to the cycle is characterized by<p>two regimes: one counter-cyclical, when output is above its potential level, and the other<p>acyclical, in the opposite case. On the contrary, the use of revised data does not allow to identify any threshold effect.<p><p>The second and third Chapters of this thesis are devoted to the exploration of the impact<p>of fiscal and monetary policies upon the economy.<p>Over the last years, two approaches have been mainly followed by practitioners for the<p>estimation of the effects of macroeconomic policies on the real activity. On the one hand,<p>calibrated and estimated DSGE models allow to trace out the economy’s responses to<p>policy disturbances within an analytical framework derived from solid microeconomic<p>foundations. On the other, vector autoregressive (VAR) models continue to be largely<p>used since they have proved to fit macro data particularly well, albeit they cannot fully<p>serve to inspect structural interrelations among economic variables.<p>Yet, the typical DSGE and VAR models are designed to handle a limited number of variables<p>and are not suitable to address economic questions potentially involving a large<p>amount of information. In a DSGE framework, in fact, identifying aggregate shocks and<p>their propagation mechanism under a plausible set of theoretical restrictions becomes a<p>thorny issue when many variables are considered. As for VARs, estimation problems may<p>arise when models are specified in a large number of indicators (although latest contributions suggest that large-scale Bayesian VARs perform surprisingly well in forecasting.<p>See in particular Banbura, Giannone and Reichlin (2007)). As a consequence, the growing<p>popularity of factor models as effective econometric tools allowing to summarize in<p>a parsimonious and flexible manner large amounts of information may be explained not<p>only by their usefulness in deriving business cycle indicators and forecasting (see for example<p>Reichlin (2002) and D’Agostino and Giannone (2006)), but also, due to recent<p>developments, by their ability in evaluating the response of economic systems to identified<p>structural shocks (see Giannone, Reichlin and Sala (2002) and Forni, Giannone, Lippi<p>and Reichlin (2007)). Parallelly, some attempts have been made to combine the rigor of<p>DSGE models and the tractability of VAR ones, with the advantages of factor analysis<p>(see Boivin and Giannoni (2006) and Bernanke, Boivin and Eliasz (2005)).<p><p>The second Chapter of this thesis, based on a joint work with Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, presents an original study combining factor and VAR analysis in an encompassing framework,<p>to investigate how "unexpected" and "unsystematic" variations in taxes and government<p>spending feed through the economy in the home country and abroad. The domestic<p>impact of fiscal shocks in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. and cross-border fiscal spillovers<p>from Germany to seven European economies is analyzed. In addition, the time evolution of domestic and cross-border tax and spending multipliers is explored. In fact, the way fiscal policy impacts on domestic and foreign economies<p>depends on several factors, possibly changing over time. In particular, the presence of excess<p>capacity, accommodating monetary policy, distortionary taxation and liquidity constrained<p>consumers, plays a prominent role in affecting how fiscal policies stimulate the<p>economic activity in the home country. The impact on foreign output crucially depends<p>on the importance of trade links, on real exchange rates and, in a monetary union, on<p>the sensitiveness of foreign economies to the common interest rate. It is well documented<p>that the last thirty years have witnessed frequent changes in the economic environment.<p>For instance, in most OECD countries, the monetary policy stance became less accommodating<p>in the 1980s compared to the 1970s, and more accommodating again in the<p>late 1990s and early 2000s. Moreover, financial markets have been heavily deregulated.<p>Hence, fiscal policy might have lost (or gained) power as a stimulating tool in the hands<p>of policymakers. Importantly, the issue of cross-border transmission of fiscal policy decisions is of the utmost relevance in the framework of the European Monetary Union and this explains why the debate on fiscal policy coordination has received so much attention since the adoption<p>of the single currency (see Ahearne, Sapir and Véron (2006) and European Commission<p>(2006)). It is found that over the period 1971 to 2004 tax shocks have generally been more effective in spurring domestic output than government spending shocks. Interestingly, the inclusion of common factors representing global economic phenomena yields to smaller multipliers<p>reconciling, at least for the U.K. the evidence from large-scale macroeconomic models,<p>generally finding feeble multipliers (see e.g. European Commission’s QUEST model), with<p>the one from a prototypical structural VAR pointing to stronger effects of fiscal policy.<p>When the estimation is performed recursively over samples of seventeen years of data, it<p>emerges that GDP multipliers have dropped drastically from early 1990s on, especially<p>in Germany (tax shocks) and in the U.S. (both tax and government spending shocks).<p>Moreover, the conduct of fiscal policy seems to have become less erratic, as documented<p>by a lower variance of fiscal shocks over time, and this might contribute to explain why<p>business cycles have shown less volatility in the countries under examination.<p>Expansionary fiscal policies in Germany do not generally have beggar-thy-neighbor effects<p>on other European countries. In particular, our results suggest that tax multipliers have<p>been positive but vanishing for neighboring countries (France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria), weak and mostly not significant for more remote ones (the U.K.<p>and Spain). Cross-border government spending multipliers are found to be monotonically<p>weak for all the subsamples considered.<p>Overall these findings suggest that fiscal "surprises", in the form of unexpected reductions in taxation and expansions in government consumption and investment, have become progressively less successful in stimulating the economic activity at the domestic level, indicating that, in the framework of the European Monetary Union, policymakers can only marginally rely on this discretionary instrument as a substitute for national monetary policies. <p><p>The objective of the third chapter is to inspect the role of monetary policy in the U.S. business cycle. In particular, the effects of "systematic" monetary policies upon several industrial sectors is investigated. The focus is on the systematic, or endogenous, component of monetary policy (i.e. the one which is related to the economic activity in a stable and predictable way), for three main reasons. First, endogenous monetary policies are likely to have sizeable real effects, if agents’ expectations are not perfectly rational and if there are some nominal and real frictions in a market. Second, as widely documented, the variability of the monetary instrument and of the main macro variables is only marginally explained by monetary "shocks", defined as unexpected and exogenous variations in monetary conditions. Third, monetary shocks can be simply interpreted as measurement errors (see Christiano, Eichenbaum<p>and Evans (1998)). Hence, the systematic component of monetary policy is likely to have played a fundamental role in affecting business cycle fluctuations. The strategy to isolate the impact of systematic policies relies on a counterfactual experiment, within a (calibrated or estimated) macroeconomic model. As a first step, a macroeconomic shock to which monetary policy is likely to respond should be selected,<p>and its effects upon the economy simulated. Then, the impact of such shock should be<p>evaluated under a “policy-inactive” scenario, assuming that the central bank does not respond<p>to it. Finally, by comparing the responses of the variables of interest under these<p>two scenarios, some evidence on the sensitivity of the economic system to the endogenous<p>component of the policy can be drawn (see Bernanke, Gertler and Watson (1997)).<p>Such kind of exercise is first proposed within a stylized DSGE model, where the analytical<p>solution of the model can be derived. However, as argued, large-scale multi-sector DSGE<p>models can be solved only numerically, thus implying that the proposed experiment cannot<p>be carried out. Moreover, the estimation of DSGE models becomes a thorny issue when many variables are incorporated (see Canova and Sala (2007)). For these arguments, a less “structural”, but more tractable, approach is followed, where a minimal amount of<p>identifying restrictions is imposed. In particular, a factor model econometric approach<p>is adopted (see in particular Giannone, Reichlin and Sala (2002) and Forni, Giannone,<p>Lippi and Reichlin (2007)). In this framework, I develop a technique to perform the counterfactual experiment needed to assess the impact of systematic monetary policies.<p>It is found that 2 and 3-digit SIC U.S. industries are characterized by very heterogeneous degrees of sensitivity to the endogenous component of the policy. Notably, the industries showing the strongest sensitivities are the ones producing durable goods and metallic<p>materials. Non-durable good producers, food, textile and lumber producing industries are<p>the least affected. In addition, it is highlighted that industrial sectors adjusting prices relatively infrequently are the most "vulnerable" ones. In fact, firms in this group are likely to increase quantities, rather than prices, following a shock positively hitting the economy. Finally, it emerges that sectors characterized by a higher recourse to external sources to finance investments, and sectors investing relatively more in new plants and machineries, are the most affected by endogenous monetary actions. / Doctorat en sciences économiques, Orientation économie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished