Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Stephen G. Donald. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Economics, June 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Urbanization and economic development have important implications for many environmental processes including global climate change. Although there is evidence that urbanization depends endogenously on economic variables, long-term forecasts of the spatial distribution of population are often made exogenously and independent of economic conditions. A beta distribution for individual countries/regions is estimated to describe the geographical distribution of population using a 1° x 1° latitude-longitude global population data set. Cross-sectional country/regional data are then used to estimate an empirical relationship between parameters of the beta distribution and macroeconomic variables as they vary among countries/regions. This conditional beta distribution allows the simulation of a changing distribution of population, including the growth of urban areas, driven by economic forecasts until the year 2100. / Abstract in HTML and technical report in PDF available on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://mit.edu/globalchange/www/).

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The objective of this study is to understand the dynamics of international monetary policy and the relationship that exists between larger more developed economies and smaller less developed economies within a policy context. The 2008 financial crisis has caused intense revival of Austrian economics due to the monetary nature of the recession caused as a subsequent effect of the stock/housing market collapse that occurred in 2007. One factor of the 2008 financial crisis that created intense concern was the extent to which the slowdown in economic activity was able to be transmitted across international borders. The South African economy was not isolated from the financial crisis by any means and experienced a significant slowdown in economic growth. By making use of data collected from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the appropriate econometric techniques, a model is developed to study the dynamics between United States monetary policy and the South African economy. The Austrian School provides a sound theoretical framework that allows for the specification of testable propositions to verify the validity of an “Austrian” internationally transmitted business cycle. Using United States money supply, South African private consumption, South African gross fixed capital formation and the South African current account, a vector autoregressive model is specified to analyse the dynamics behind the United States and South African economy. The results of the empirical test all confirm the theoretical prescriptions developed in the literature review that monetary growth in the United States raise consumption, investment and improve the current account balance in the South African economy. This is a novel result for this study as it confirms that a large central economy has the ability to trigger economic expansions in a peripheral economy. This study further points out the inefficiencies associated with Keynesian style policy making and propagates for a movement towards a more prudent Austrian approach. Keynesian policy making through demand oriented policies have historically been more concerned with “curing” economic instability rather than preventing it. In light of this, the need for economic reform specifically within the manner in which monetary policy is conducted is evident. Aggressive monetary policy in the wake of economic slowdown is no longer effective at creating a sustainable and stable economic environment. A movement away from the monopolization of money and central economic decision making is necessary if the global economy wishes to reach economic permanence.

In the recent past, Zambia has increased its external borrowings significantly after reaching the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) completion point. The Zambian government has been on an ambitious borrowing spree with the intent that most of these funds would be channelled towards building and maintenance of key national infrastructure including roads and construction of new airports. This study undertook to answer the question, does increasing external debt affect growth of a nation’s economy? The thesis commenced an econometric study between the years 1980 to 2015 using publicly available data premised on the neoclassical economic growth model. The findings from this investigation show that shocks to external debt negatively impact the economic output of Zambia which is proxied by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Conversely, it was found that external debt stock could not reliably forecast future economic growth for the nation, a finding which in itself provides an area of further investigations. These research findings and recommendations make it clear that Zambia requires a comprehensive debt contraction and management framework to avoid the vagaries of short-term decisions which may not always be premised on sound economic thinking.

This dissertation uses original datasets from the U.S. and Japan to explore issues in spatial economics and public finance. In the first chapter, I study how the relocation of inventors affects local and aggregate growth through technological diffusion across U.S. cities. I propose a quantitative spatial theory of growth and knowledge diffusion through internal migration. My model highlights two mechanisms by which productivity growth can be higher in one city than in another: (1) agglomeration forces and (2) knowledge inflows through internal migration. Using data on US cities, I find that knowledge diffusion explains approximately 40 percent of the spatial variation in productivity changes, and agglomeration forces explain the rest. I quantify the dynamic effects of place-based policies and find that reducing the costs of migrating to a small number of cities can improve aggregate efficiency while reducing disparities in productivity across cities. Growing spatial inequality has led policymakers to enact tax breaks to attract corporate investment and jobs to economically peripheral regions. In the second chapter, co-authored with Cameron LaPoint, we demonstrate the importance of multi-plant firms’ physical capital structure for the take-up and efficacy of place-based policies by studying a national bonus depreciation scheme in Japan which altered the relative cost of capital across locations, offering high-tech manufacturers immediate cost deductions from their corporate income tax bill. Combining corporate balance sheets with a registry containing investment by plant location and asset type, we find the policy generated big gains in employment and investment in building construction and in machines at pre-existing production sites, with an implied partial equilibrium fiscal cost per job created of $16,000. The policy produced a welfare gain of $56.72 billion, or roughly 40% of one year’s worth of average annual corporate profits. For eligible firms, plant-level hiring in ineligible areas outstripped that in eligible areas, suggesting reallocation of resources within firms’ internal capital and labor markets mitigates the spatial misallocation inherent in subsidizing low-productivity areas. How governments should choose the frequency of payments has received little attention in the literature on the optimal design of benefits programs. In the third chapter, co-authored with Cameron LaPoint, we propose a simple model in which the government chooses the interval length between payments, subject to a tradeoff between the costs of providing more frequent benefits and welfare gains from mitigating consumption non-smoothing. Using a high-frequency retail dataset that links consumers to their purchase history, we apply the model to the Japanese National Pension System. Our evidence suggests suboptimal intra-cycle consumption patterns with negligible retailer price discrimination. Model calibrations support the worldwide prevalence of monthly payment systems.

by Wong Tak Chuen. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-108). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / ACKNOWLEDGMENT --- p.iii / LIST OF TABLES --- p.iv / LIST OF ILLUSTRATION --- p.v / CHAPTER / Chapter ONE --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter TWO --- THE LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.2 / Chapter THREE --- METHODOLOGY --- p.8 / Error Correction Model / Unit-Root Tests / Cointegration Tests / Structural Break Test / Chapter FOUR --- MODEL SPECIFICATION AND SIMULATION --- p.19 / Chapter FIVE --- SIMULATION ANALYSIS --- p.45 / Chapter SIX --- CONCLUSION --- p.51 / TABLES --- p.53 / ILLUSTRATIONS --- p.67 / APPENDIX --- p.81 / Chapter A --- THE ESTIMATED MODEL / Chapter B --- DATA DESCRIPTION / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.109

Wang Chongying. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-69). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter I. --- Endogenous Time Preference and Non-neutrality of Money --- p.1 / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.2 / Chapter 2 --- The Model --- p.5 / Chapter 3 --- Non-neutrality of Money --- p.9 / Chapter 4 --- Equilibrium Dynamics --- p.13 / Chapter 5 --- Conclusion --- p.16 / Chapter II. --- Endogenous Time Preference and Interest Rate Feedback Rules --- p.18 / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.19 / Chapter 2 --- Endowment Economy --- p.21 / Chapter 2.1 --- The Model --- p.21 / Chapter 2.2 --- Equilibrium Dynamics --- p.25 / Chapter 3 --- Extended Model with Capital --- p.28 / Chapter 3.1 --- The Model --- p.28 / Chapter 3.2 --- Equilibrium Dynamics --- p.32 / Chapter 4 --- Conclusion --- p.34 / Chapter III. --- Interest Rate Rules and Indeterminacy in a Discrete-Time Monetary Model --- p.37 / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.38 / Chapter 2 --- The Model --- p.39 / Chapter 3 --- Equilibrium Dynamics --- p.42 / Chapter 4 --- Conclusion --- p.45 / Chapter IV. --- Backward-Looking Interest Rate Feedback Rules --- p.48 / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.49 / Chapter 2 --- The Model --- p.51 / Chapter 3 --- Equilibrium Dynamics --- p.57 / Chapter 4 --- Conclusion --- p.61 / Chapter V. --- Appendix --- p.63 / Chapter VI. --- References --- p.66

Chen Haiqiang. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 33-35). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- The Model --- p.4 / Chapter 3. --- Least Squares Estimations --- p.6 / Chapter 4. --- Inference --- p.7 / Chapter 4.1 --- Asymptotic Joint Distribution of the Threshold Estimators --- p.7 / Chapter 4.2 --- Testing Threshold Effect: Model Selection Followed by Testing --- p.13 / Chapter 5. --- Modeling --- p.16 / Chapter 5.1 --- Generic Consistency of the Threshold Estimators under specification errors --- p.17 / Chapter 5.2 --- Modeling Procedure --- p.20 / Chapter 6. --- Monte Carlo Simulations --- p.21 / Chapter 7. --- Empirical Application in the Financial Market --- p.24 / Chapter 7.1 --- Data Description --- p.26 / Chapter 7.2 --- Estimated Results --- p.26 / Chapter 8. --- Conclusion --- p.30 / References --- p.33 / Appendix 1: Proof of theorem1 --- p.36 / Appendix 2: Proof of theorem2 --- p.39 / Appendix 3: Proof of theorem3 --- p.43 / List of Graph --- p.49