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

The research performed throughout this dissertation aims at implementing quantitative methods in order to assess economic and technological performances of firms, i.e. it tries to assess the impacts of the determinants of technological activity on the results of this activity. For this purpose, a representative sample of the most important R&D firms in the world is constituted. The micro-economic nature of the analysis, as well as its international dimension are two main features of this research at the empirical level.<p><p>The second chapter illustrates the importance of R&D investments, patenting activities and other measures of technological activities performed by firms over the last 10 years.<p><p>The third chapter describes the main features as well as the construction of the database. The raw data sample consists of comparable detailed micro-level data on 2676 large manufacturing firms from several countries. These firms have reported important R&D expenditures over the period 1980-1994.<p><p>The fourth chapter explores the dynamic structure of the patent-R&D relationship by considering the number of patent applications as a function of present and lagged levels of R&D expenditures. R&D spillovers as well as technological and geographical opportunities are taken into account as additional determinants in order to explain patenting behaviours. The estimates are based on recently developed econometric techniques that deal with the discrete non-negative nature of the dependent patent variable as well as the simultaneity that can arise between the R&D decisions and patenting. The results show evidence of a rather contemporaneous impact of R&D activities on patenting. As far as R&D spillovers are concerned, these externalities have a significantly higher impact on patenting than own R&D. Furthermore, these effects appear to take more time, three years on average, to show up in patents.<p><p>The fifth chapter explores the contribution of own stock of R&D capital to productivity performance of firms. To this end the usual productivity residual methodology is implemented. The empirical section presents a first set of results which replicate the analysis of previous studies and tries to assess the robustness of the findings with regard to the above issues. Then, further results, based on different sub samples of the data set, investigate to what extent the R&D contribution on productivity differs across firms of different industries and geographic areas or between small and large firms and low and high-tech firms. The last section explores more carefully the simultaneity issue. On the whole, the estimates indicate that R&D has a positive impact on productivity performances. Yet, this contribution is far from being homogeneous across the different dimensions of data or according to the various assumptions retained in the productivity model.<p><p>The last empirical chapter goes deeper into the analysis of firms' productivity increases, by considering besides own R&D activities the impact of technological spillovers. The chapter begins by surveying the alternative ways proposed in the literature in order to asses the effect of R&D spillovers on productivity. The main findings reported by some studies at the micro level are then outlined. Then, the framework to formalize technological externalities and other technological determinants is exposed. This framework is based on a positioning of firms into a technological space using their patent distribution across technological fields. The question of whether the externalities generated by the technological and geographic neighbours are different on the recipient's productivity is also addressed by splitting the spillover variable into a local and national component. Then, alternative measures of technological proximity are examined. Some interesting observations emerge from the empirical results. First, the impact of spillovers on productivity increases is positive and much more important than the contribution of own R&D. Second, spillover effects are not the same according to whether they emanate from firms specialized in similar technological fields or firms more distant in the technological space. Finally, the magnitude and direction of these effects are radically different within and between the pillars of the Triad. While European firms do not appear to particularly benefit from both national and international sources of spillovers, US firms are mainly receptive to their national stock and Japanese firms take advantage from the international stock.<p> / Doctorat en sciences économiques, Orientation économie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Cette thèse de doctorat composée de trois chapitres contribue au développement de tests statistiques et à analyser la transmission financière dans un cadre multivarié hétéroscédastique. Le premier chapitre propose deux tests du multiplicateur de Lagrange de constance des corrélations conditionnelles dans les modèles GARCH multivariés. Si l'hypothèse nulle repose sur des corrélations conditionnelles constantes, l'hypothèse alternative propose une première spécification basée sur des réseaux de neurones artificiels et une seconde représentée par une forme fonctionnelle inconnue qui est linéarisée à l'aide d'un développement de Taylor.Dans le deuxième chapitre, un nouveau modèle est introduit dans le but de tester la non-linéarité des (co)variances conditionnelles. Si l'hypothèse nulle repose sur une fonction linéaire des innovations retardées au carré et des (co)variances conditionnelles, l'hypothèse alternative se caractérise quant à elle par une fonction de transition non-linéaire : exponentielle ou logistique ; une configuration avec effets de levier est également proposée. Dans les deux premiers chapitres, les expériences de simulations et les illustrations empiriques montrent les bonnes performances de nos tests de mauvaise spécification.Le dernier chapitre étudie la transmission d'information en séance et hors séance de cotation en termes de rendements et de volatilités entre la Chine, l'Amérique et l'Europe. Le problème d'asynchronicité est considéré avec soin dans la modélisation bivariée avec la Chine comme référence. / This Ph.D. thesis composed by three chapters contributes to the development of test statistics and to analyse financial transmission in a multivariate heteroskedastic framework.The first chapter proposes two Lagrange multiplier tests of constancy of conditional correlations in multivariate GARCH models. Whether the null hypothesis is based on constant conditional correlations, the alternative hypothesis proposes a first specification based on artificial neural networks, and a second specification based on an unknown functional form linearised by a Taylor expansion.In the second chapter, a new model is introduced in order to test for nonlinearity in conditional (co)variances. Whether the null hypothesis is based on a linear function of the lagged squared innovations and the conditional (co)variances, the alternative hypothesis is characterised by a nonlinear exponential or logistic transition function; a configuration with leverage effects is also proposed.In the two first chapters, simulation experiments and empirical illustrations show the good performances of our misspecification tests.The last chapter studies daytime and overnight information transmission in terms of returns and volatilities between China, America and Europe. The asynchronicity issue is carefully considered in the bivariate modelling with China as benchmark.

Cette thèse s'articule autour de deux thèmes : l'évaluation monétaire des biens environnementaux et l'innovation en environnement. Si ces deux volets sont traités séparément, ils s'attachent toutefois à contribuer à un objectif commun : la lutte contre le changement climatique. Cette thèse se décline en cinq chapitres. Le premier propose une introduction générale, qui présente les deux thèmes développés, ainsi que leur contribution au défi du changement climatique. En attribuant une valeur pécuniaire aux biens environnementaux, l'évaluation monétaire peut servir la décision publique, non seulement lors de la mise en œuvre de projets pro-environnementaux, mais aussi en aidant é évaluer les dommages causés à l'environnement. L'innovation environnementale peut encourager les transferts de technologies et une croissance plus verte, dans une volonté de développement durable. Les chapitres 2 et 3 s'intéressent aux expériences de choix, en vue d'évaluer le consentement-à-payer pour l'amélioration de la qualité de l'eau de rivières. A partir d'une enquête proposant aux résidents de choisir entre différentes options de gestion pour les rivières de leur voisinage, nous montrons dans le chapitre 2 que ces derniers sont disposés à payer pour une meilleure qualité de l'eau. Nous nous apercevons toutefois que plus de 20% des individus de notre échantillon adoptent un comportement de protestation, c'est-à-dire déclarent un consentement-à-payer nul alors même que leur valeur pour l'eau des rivières est positive. Dans le chapitre 3, nous recourons à un modèle logit emboîté, afin de prendre en compte ce type de comportement. Nous obtenons des consentements-à-payer plus élevés, signe que le modèle utilisé est mieux adapté pour traiter des données comportant des zéros de protestation. Les chapitres 4 et 5 étudient les déterminants de l'innovation en environnement. A partir de données sur les dépôts de brevets et de l'enquête d'opinion du forum économique mondial, le chapitre 4 s'intéresse à l'impact de politiques publiques sur l'innovation en matière de technologies propres dans les domaines de l'eau, de l'air et des déchets. Notre analyse met en évidence le rôle positif sur l'innovation en environnement de la capacité d'innovation globale d'un pays et de la rigueur de ses politiques environnementales. Le chapitre 5 étudie l'influence des collaborations pour la publication d'articles scientifiques sur l'innovation en matière d'énergie éolienne. Nous couplons notre base de données sur les brevets avec une base rassemblant de nombreuses références littéraires dans le domaine de la recherche scientifique. Nous montrons que les transferts de connaissance entre les pays membres et non membres de l'OCDE dans le domaine éolien contribuent à améliorer la capacité d'innovation des pays non membres de l'OCDE. / This dissertation is interested in two areas of the environmental economics field: monetary valuation of environmental goods and services and environmental innovation. Even if those two fields are studied separately in this dissertation, they both aim at contributing to a common objective: fight against climate change. This dissertation ranges into five chapters. The first one is a general introduction, which depicts the two fields of the dissertation and their relevance towards climate change. Environmental valuation serves public decision through monetary valuation of environmental goods. This is useful not only for the implementation of projects directed to environmental protection, but also for the quantification of environmental damages. Environmental innovation may encourage technological transfers, but also a greener growth, in a will that our societies develop themselves following a sustainable path. Chapters 2 and 3 are interested in the choice experiments method in order to value local residents’ willingness-to-pay for water quality improvements at a specific river basin in France. Using a choice experiment with different management regimes for the river basin, we find that residents are willing-to-pay for an improved water quality. Despite this positive result, we observe a significant proportion (20%) of protest bids in our sample. Protest bids are respondents that state a zero willingness-to-pay, even though their true value for the good is positive. In order to take into account the existence of protest bids, we estimate a cross-nested logit model in chapter 3. We then obtain larger willingness-to-pay, which proves that the cross-nested logit model best fits the peculiarity of our data. Chapters 4 and 5 try to identify the drivers of environmental innovation. Using world patent data and data from the world economic forum survey, we study the impact of environmental public policies on innovation in clean technologies directed to water and air pollution, and waste. We find that both general innovative capacity and environmental policy stringency have a positive role on environment-related innovation. Chapter 5 looks at the influence of co-authorship of scientific publications on wind energy-related innovation. We use both the world patent database and the “Scopus” database, which contains lots of scientific literature references. We highlight the existence of knowledge spillovers between OECD and NON-OECD countries. Therefore, we show that knowledge transfers, regarding wind energy-related innovation, between OECD and NON-OECD countries contribute to improve NON-OECD countries' innovative capacity.

Cette thèse se compose de trois essais autonomes sur le marché boursier chinois. Le premier essai examine le processus de la découverte du prix des actions A et H pour des sociétés chinoises double cotées à la fois sur les bourses de Shanghai/Shenzhen et de Hong Kong durant les sessions d'échange communes. Nous mettons en évidence une relation de long terme entre les prix des actions A et H. En appliquant la méthode de l'information partagée de Hasbrouck (1995), il apparaît, quand la Chine adoptait un régime de change fixe, le marché domestique contribuait plus d'information à la découverte du prix que le marché étranger; tandis que sous un régime de change flexible, c'est le marché étranger qui dominait dans la découverte du prix.Le deuxième essai prenant les réformes chinoises du régime de Juillet 2005 et de Juillet 2008 comme des événements spéciaux, il étudie si ces changements de régime de change affectent l'arbitrage entre les marchés des actions A et H. En comparant les niveaux des impacts des facteurs idiosyncratiques sur la décote de prix des actions A et H avant et après les changements de régime, les résultats montrent que la relaxation des contrôles des changes ne favorise pas l'arbitrage entre les deux marchés. Par ailleurs, ce changement de régime de change introduit un risque de change important dans la stratégie des arbitragistes.Le troisième essai aborde la transmission d'information en séance et hors séance de cotation en termes de rendements et de volatilités entre la Chine, l'Amérique et l'Europe. Le problème du synchronisme est considéré avec soin dans la modélisation bivariée avec la Chine comme référence avec des données journalières. / This thesis consists of three self-contained essays on the Chinese stock market. The first essay examines the price discovery process of Chinese dual-listed firms on the A-share and H-share markets during overlapping trading hours. We provide evidence that there exists a long-term relationship between the A- and H-share markets. By applying the information share model of Hasbrouck (1995), we find that: under a fixed exchange rate, the A-share market contributes more innovations in price discovery than the H-share market; while under a managed floating exchange rate, it is the H-share market that plays a dominant role in the price discovery process.In the second essay, by using the exchange rate regime changes of July 21, 2005 and July 01, 2008 of as special events, we examine whether changes in exchange-rate regime affect the intensity of inter-market arbitrage between A- and H-share markets. By comparing the significance of the impact of idiosyncratic factors on the H-share discount before and after the changes of exchange rate regime, the results show that the relaxation of exchange controls does not encourage inter-market arbitrage between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong markets. Further, the switch from a fixed to a floating exchange-rate regime introduces an important exchange rate risk to arbitrageurs.The last essay studies daytime and overnight information transmission in terms of returns and volatility between China, America and Europe. The asynchronicity issue is carefully considered in the bivariate modelling with China as benchmark with daily data.

The dissertation consists of four empirical papers in the field of monetary economics. The first paper examines the extent of real exchange rate misalignment in the selected euro area countries, the next two papers shed light on macroeconomic spillovers in the remaining EU countries which are not part of the single currency area, while the last paper focuses on the exchange rate pass-through in the Czech Republic.

This dissertation thesis consists of three essays on new EU foreign exchange markets (FX), i.e. the Czech koruna, Polish zloty and Hungarian forint. In the first two essays, the impact of foreign macroeconomic news announcements and central banks' monetary policy settings on the value and volatility of examined exchange rates is analyzed. In the third chapter, the conditional comovements and volatility spillovers on new EU FX markets is examined. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the existing empirical literature by providing new evidence of the examined currencies during periods, which have not been examined yet (after the Global financial crisis (GFC), during the EU debt crisis and during currency interventions in the Czech Republic). The first essay (Chapter 2) examines the impact of Eurozone/Germany and US macroeconomic news announcements and monetary policy settings of the ECB and the Fed on the value of new EU member states' currencies. It is a complex analysis of 1-minute intraday dataset performed by event study methodology (ESM). We observe different reactions of exchange rates in pair with the US dollar on the US macroeconomic announcements and Euro-expressed FX rates on Germany macro news during the EU debt crisis and after it. We also provide evidence of leaking news, showing...