Yes / Using panel data of 1,080 multinational corporations (MNCs) from the United States, we examine the effects of environmental sustainability practices on the degree of firms’ offshoring activities. In addition, we disaggregate offshoring activities into their core components depending on whether or not the firm buys (inputs) or sells (outputs) and/or owns assets in a given country and examine the extent to which sustainability practices influence the different components of offshoring decisions. The results indicate that sustainability practices significantly affect offshoring activities of MNCs. In particular, we found that sustainable business practices matter when the firm sells goods or owns assets in the given host nation. Additionally, the results show that the sustainability–degree of the internationalization relationship is crucial for MNCs that have offshoring activities in advanced economies relative to those firms that have activities in emerging markets. Our results are robust to alternative explanations.

The thesis focuses on the contemporary changes an trends in the localization of enconomic power in the world. The first part theoretically summarizes the development of the modern world system and describes the formation of the core and the periphery of the world economy. This part mentions also the main factors that influence localization of the world's wealth such as technological progress or world population. The following part characterizes in details recent changes in the localization of selected sectors of the world economy and indicates the future trends. Among the selected sectors are energy industry, automobile industry, textile and clothing industry, tourism and transport. All these sectors confirm the increase in the importance of developing countries and the deterioration of advanced economies.

This study explores the relationship between income inequality and household indebtedness using panel data on 17 OECD-countries over the time period 1995-2015. Motivated by relative income theory of consumption and previous empirical research we anticipate a non-monotonic relationship between changes in household debt and income inequality (measured by the Gini- coefficient), as dynamics between different groups of households in the income spread is expected to vary at different levels of inequality. Carrying out the empirical analysis we find notable indications of an inverse U-shape relationship between inequality levels and household borrowing. We locate an estimated turning point at a Gini-value of 28.84, which indicates a positive marginal effect on household borrowing as inequality grows from levels below this point, turning negative as inequality increases further. This suggests that as income inequality grows from relatively low levels households increase their rate of borrowing, while at higher levels of inequality households decrease their borrowing rate in response to growing income disparities. Results hold under a random effects model and a pooled OLS model, but fail to prove significant in the stricter fixed effects model, why we cannot draw any definitive conclusions about the magnitude of the effect. Nevertheless, the findings of further complimentary estimations lend credence to our hypothesis. Benefits and limitations of our data and empirical methods are comprehensively discussed, as well as the theoretical mechanisms explaining the relationship. Indicative but in the end inconclusive results leaves ample opportunity for further investigations with more advanced empirical methods. / <p>This bachelor thesis was awarded the highest grade, VG.</p>

The complex issue of corruption has attracted much attention over the last 20 years. The problem was analyzed mostly in the context of developing and transition countries, though not only the recent financial crisis showed the severity of corruption also in the world's most developed countries. This thesis analyzes twelve currently available corruption assessments for a cross section of 39 developed countries in the period 2007-2010. The thesis categorizes these assessments into three basic generations and characterizes the weaknesses and limitations of particular methods. The analysis is based on determination of relationship between individual corruption measures and recognizes specific aspects of corruption actually measured by particular indices. With the exception of strictly opinion poll-based corruption indices, the first and the second generation of corruption indices correlate well for a set of developed countries. This indicates that the sector specific indices, e.g. expenditure corruption assessment, are in analyzed countries closely related to the overall political corruption levels. An applied hierarchical cluster analysis gives better picture of otherwise inconsistent developed countries corruption rankings and divides countries into ten homogeneous groups. However, the analysis...

Submitted by Pedro Guimarães (pedroengel@hotmail.com) on 2017-12-28T19:42:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese.pdf: 917520 bytes, checksum: cfa05ebb1d37a4a617f387942ee05a15 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by GILSON ROCHA MIRANDA (gilson.miranda@fgv.br) on 2018-01-15T18:46:52Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese.pdf: 917520 bytes, checksum: cfa05ebb1d37a4a617f387942ee05a15 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-01-16T19:08:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese.pdf: 917520 bytes, checksum: cfa05ebb1d37a4a617f387942ee05a15 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-07-28 / This doctoral thesis is composed of three chapters related to portfolio theory and model uncertainty. The first paper investigates how ambiguity averse agents explain the equity premium puzzle for a large group of countries including both Advanced Economies (AE) and Emerging Markets (EM). In the second article, we develop a general robust allocation framework that is capable of dealing with parametric and non parametric asset allocation models. In the final paper, I investigate portfolio selection criteria and analyze a set of portfolios out of sample performance in terms of Sharpe ratio (SR) and Certainty Equivalent (CEQ)

This dissertation argues that financial cycles are different for advanced economies and emerging countries. The main underlying reason is the different financial development that makes for instability in emeging markets which is pronounced by more intensive and amplified financial cycle. As such, even the policy implications are different.