This paper identifies America's first Great Moderation, a period from 1841-1856 of unbroken economic expansion and low volatility comparable to the Great Moderation of the 1980s-2000s. This moderation occurred despite a lack of central banks, low governmental spending, and barriers to interstate commerce during the antebellum period. I demonstrate this moderation in industrial production and stock market indexes and compare the first Great Moderation with the second in these economic factors. These results also call into question the conventional wisdom of the National Bureau of Economic Research business cycle chronology that the antebellum period was volatile and fraught with recessions. I then identify several possible causes of this stable growth in the effects of cotton prices, technological revolutions such as railroads, and wage and interest rate integration during the period, among other factors. Understanding these factors helps develop our understanding of the American antebellum economy and the causes of economic growth and stability, especially during these Great Moderations.

<p>This dissertation is the collection of three essays aimed to evaluate the empirical performance of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models in explaining the behavior of macroeconomic dynamics in emerging countries. </p><p>Chapter 1, which is joint work with M. Uribe and R. Pancrazzi, investigates the hypothesis that a real business cycles model driven by permanent and transitory productivity shocks can explain well observed business-cycle fluctuations in emerging countries. The model is estimated using more than a century of Argentine data. </p><p>In Chapter 2, a comprehensive real DSGE model of an emerging country is estimated using Bayesian techniques, expanding the data set used in Chapter 1. The goal is to characterize the relative relevance of ten different business cycles' drivers: three sectorial technology shocks, embodied and disembodied non-stationary technology, terms of trade, the world interest rate, trade policy, government expenditures and the country premium. </p><p>Finally, Chapter 3 estimates (using Mexican data) a DSGE model of an emerging country containing many frictions, as has been recently argued, that impose non-trivial constraints for monetary-policy design. In particular, the framework features a sectorial decomposition of the productive sector, intermediate inputs, imperfect pass-through, endogenous premium to finance capital accumulation, a liability-dollarization problem, currency substitution, price and wage rigidities, and dynamics driven by eleven shocks.</p> / Dissertation

Taiwan¡¦s DRAM has high technology, strong capital, and standardized products, but it still can not be escaped from economic fluctuations. With this impact, Taiwan¡¦s DRAM has faced the problem of cash flow imbalance; moreover, the problem is going from bad to worse. The study is based on the view of system dynamics and focuses on fixed assets and investment skills of the investment-cash flow, operating cash flow, and business cycles of Taiwan¡¦s DRAM. It considers the features of dynamic complex, including loop, time delay and nonlinear and constructs a system dynamics model. The model would apply key elements to suppose an investment strategy and then to mimic an investment situation. The aim of the study will figure out the suitable investment strategy to assistant Taiwan¡¦s DRAM making the most of its inputs. The study discovers: (1) the best investment strategy for 10 year is 5.0 (to invest three fixed asset sets); for 30 year is 6.0 (to invest manufacturing skills and one fixed asset set) and 7.0 (to invest manufacturing skills and two fixed asset sets), (2) the most effective element for investment strategy in the long run is to invest fixed asset sets rather than upgrading manufacturing skills, (3) to keep investing in semiconductor fabrications would endanger Taiwan¡¦s DRAM itself; hence the superior limit investment quantity for fixed assets are five to six sets,(4) the best investment timing for Taiwan¡¦s DRAM is the first two business cycle season, and (5)when Taiwan¡¦s DRAM faces economic downturn, the effective investment strategy for it is few. If Taiwan¡¦s DRAM doesn¡¦t change its industrial structure, it will face the high risk of loss.

Business cycle is an important issue for economist. Because the fluctuations of product and employment have deep influences on people¡¦s life and social stability, almost every government tries to reduce the volatility of national business cycles. If we want to make it, we must realize it first. Since countries communicate with each other more frequently in recent decades, the volatility of national product cycles is not only influenced by domestic economic variables but also foreign ones. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of transmission mechanism on international business cycles synchronization (BCCs). The major purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of international vertical specialization on BCCs among industrial countries. There are two kinds of effect. One is indirect effect. Vertical specialization happens between industrial countries and developing countries, so it can reduce bilateral trade intensity among industrial countries. Through this way, BCCs among industrial countries will reduce. The other one is direct effect. Vertical specialization changes the economic structure of industrial countries. Industrial countries can focus on product development and market research. This kind of economic structure is less capital intensive, which lessens the effect of common shocks to industrial country¡¦s business cycles. BCCs among industrial countries will reduce. We measured the effect using the data from G6 (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, UK and US). The result is consistent with our inferance. Vertical specialization can reduce BCCs by reducing bilateral trade intensive among industrial countries. There is a negative relation between Vertical specialization and BCCs among industrial countries.

This thesis aims to understand the role of interest rate setting behavior of the banks for the transmission of technology, monetary policy and loan rate shocks into the real economy. To this end, we introduce a monopolistically competitive banking sector into a New Keynesian model. Here, each bank can change its loan rate only infrequently in the fashion of Calvo type staggered contract. This setting implies that the adjustment of the aggregate loan rate is sticky, which is consistent with the empirical evidence. The results show that having sticky adjustment in the loan market changes the dynamics of the model significantly. Following each shock, the sluggish adjustment of the loan rate affects the amount of loan used by the borrowers considerably. This is the main reason behind the differentials across the impulse responses of the model with sticky loan rate and flexible loan rate.

Modern portfolio theory stipulates that an investor can reduce systemic risk simply by diversifying its assets across national boundaries. Therefore, the issue of whether stock markets are cointegrated carries important implications for portfolio diversification. This study aims to identify and model a relationship between four equity markets namely, Turkish, European, North American and emerging markets using cointegration technique. We investigated the existence of cointegrating equation between four stock market indices and also the existence of a structural break. During our investigation, we constructed a vector error correction model (VECM) to observe short and long run relationships between the four markets. We used daily data from the October 23, 1995 until November 20, 2009 and relevant Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) indices, namely MSCI Turkey, MSCI North America, MSCI Europe and MSCI Emerging Markets. Our first finding was that the Turkish equity markets are cointegrated with European, North American and emerging markets indicates that investing in the Turkish equity market does not provide an opportunity for risk diversification for international investors in the long run. It is only possible to benefit from the discrepancies which may occur in the short run. Furthermore, we identified a structural break contemporaneous with crisis of November 2000.

This study analyzes the effect of capital outflows on economic growth though the channels described in sudden stop literature. Using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach / it is found that there is a cointegration between capital inflows, real exchange rate and real GDP. The results show that there is a significant positive long-run relation between capital inflows and growth. It is also found that capital inflows affect real output in the short run. The results show that real exchange rate is not a significant determinant of real output both in the short run and long run. Moreover, in order to capture the dynamic responses, a vector autoregressive (VAR) methodology has been employed. The results show that a negative innovation in capital inflows causes real exchange rate depreciation and output contraction.

This thesis measures the effects of transformation of Turkish banks from a &ldquo / traditional&rdquo / one to a &ldquo / modern&rdquo / one over the period 2002-2009 and 2008 global financial crisis on efficiency of Turkish banks. Malmquist Total Factor Productivity Index is constructed using data envelopment analysis to measure the efficiency change in Turkish banking sector. The paper also analyzes the sensitivity of efficiency measures to different descriptions of inputs and outputs by employing two different approaches to describe the inputs and outputs of a bank. The major difference between the approaches is the use of deposits and non-deposit funds as input or output. Both confirm that the efficiency of the Turkish banking sector had increased over the period under examination and 2008 global financial crisis had adversely affected the efficiency of Turkish banks. The results show that the banks which had advanced in transformation to modern banking before 2001 financial crisis had experienced higher than the average increments in efficiency in the post-2001 financial crisis period.

In this dissertation, two questions concerning monetary policy under the Taylor rule have been addressed. The &#64257;rst question is on, under the Taylor rule, whether a central bank should be responsible for both bank supervision and monetary policy or whether the two tasks should be exercised by separate institutions. This is the main focus of Chapter I. The second question is on whether the Taylor rule plays an important role in explaining modern business cycles in the United States. The second question has been covered by Chapter II. The implications of the &#64257;rst chapter can be summarized as follows: (i) it is inevitable for the central bank to have a systematic error in conducting monetary policy when the central bank does not have a bank supervisory role; (ii) without a bank supervisory role, the e&#64256;ectiveness of monetary policy cannot be guaranteed; (iii) because of the existence of con&#64258;ict of interests, giving a bank supervisory role to the central bank does not guarantee the e&#64256;ectiveness of monetary policy, either; (iv) the way of setting up another government agency, bank regulator, and making the central bank and the regulator cooperate each other does not guarantee the e&#64256;ectiveness of monetary policy because, in this way, the systematic error in conducting monetary policy cannot be eliminated; (v) in the view of social welfare, not in the view of the e&#64256;ectiveness of monetary policy, it is better for the central bank to keep the whole responsibility or at least a partial responsibility on bank supervision. In the second chapter, we examined the e&#64256;ect of a technology shock and a money shock in the context of an RBC model incorporating the Taylor rule as the Fed??s monetary policy. One thing signi&#64257;cantly di&#64256;erent from other researches on this topic is the way the Taylor rule is introduced in the model. In this chapter, the Taylor rule is introduced by considering the relationship among the Fisher equation, Euler equation and the Taylor rule explicitly in the dynamic system of the relevant RBC model. With this approach, it has been shown that, even in a &#64258;exible-price environment, the two major failures in RBC models with money can be resolved. Under the Taylor rule, the correlation between output and in&#64258;ation appears to be positive and the response of our model economy to a shock is persistent. Furthermore, the possibility of an existing liquidity e&#64256;ect is found. These results imply that the Taylor rule does play a key role in explaining business cycles in the United States.

The recent economic recession has had a significant impact on residential real estate both nationally and regionally. Our research is focused specifically on Cobb County, Georgia and the impact that the declining economy has had on home buying and property values in this area. Specifically, this research aims to identify changes in the residential market in terms of significant characteristics of housing and their corresponding effect on home values.