Abstract The thesis investigates how the European Union promotes stability and security in the Mediterranean region. The aim is to analyse the European Union’s security ambitions with Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the Barcelona Process. An analytical framework with five sectors (military, political, economic, environmental and societal), based on the Copenhagen School’s theories about security sectors and securitization, is used for the analysis. Within the framework threats, objectives and methods are categorized into each security sector. Then it is possible to distinguish if any sector is more prioritised by the EU. Qualitative text analysis is used to examine relevant EU-documents. The result of the analysis shows that the European Union prioritizes the economical and societal sector in promoting peace and security within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. Through economical integration and cultural dialogue, the EU tries to enhance security and stability. The EU emphasises the importance of global governance and international law for a stable peace. The study concludes that the widened concept of security, within the Copenhagen School, can help to explain the European Union’s work inside the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership.

The last ten years have been extremely challenging for both researchers in monetary economics and policymakers.The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009, in spite of its size and severity, was initially widely perceived in the Euro Area (EA) as an imported and transitory crisis: it was frequently predicted that the EA economy would recover once the US and the World Economy rebounded. Instead, after a brief period of recovery, the Euro Area was hit by the Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2011-12, a domestic crisis which widened the divide already existing between core and peripheral countries up to the point of threatening a break-up of the euro. Thanks to the bold monetary policy response of the ECB this fear gradually vanished, but the sudden fall in oil price and the uncertain economic outlook led to the low inflation period, particularly severe in the EA, in which inflation, both in terms of headline and core measures, is well below the ECB target of 2%. This prompted the ECB to launch its Quantitative Easing program, at the beginning of 2015, much later than what the FED implemented to offset the impact of the 2007-09 crisis.This dissertation consists of two different but interlinked parts, which contribute to the empirical literature on monetary policy, low inflation and the business cycle. The first part is composed by Chapters I and II, and it is devoted to analyse the EA economy, both before the Global Financial Crisis and during the most recent low inflation period. The second one, composed by Chapters III and IV, focuses on the US economy to evaluate the possible negative consequences of the extraordinary monetary stimulus undertaken by the FED. In particular, we study the risks for both price and financial stability of the effects of the so called lift-off, i.e. the gradual normalization of monetary stance. In the first Chapter, we provide novel evidence on the different effects of the ECB common monetary policy on euro-area core and peripheral countries even before the eruption of the crisis.We estimate a structural dynamic factor model on a large panel of Euro Area quarterly variables to take into account both the comovement and the heterogeneity in the EA business cycle, and we then simulate the model to investigate the possible existence of asymmetric effects of ECB monetary policy on member states' economies. Data stop before the eruption of the Global Financial Crisis in order to only assess conventional monetary shocks, which are identified by means of sign restrictions. Although the introduction of the euro has changed the monetary transmission mechanism in the individual countries towards a more homogeneous response, we find that differences still remain between North and South Europe in terms of prices and unemployment. These results are the consequence of country-specific structures, rather than of European Central Bank policies.In the second Chapter we use a Bayesian VAR model to analyse the transmission of global and domestic shocks in the euro area, with a particular focus on the drivers of inflation, especiallyin the recent period labeled as low inflation. We identify several shocks by means of sign restrictions, and we account for the role of ECB unconventional monetary policies by using a shadow interest rate. We document that the recent low inflation phase was not entirely attributable to falling oil prices, but also to slack in economic activity and to insufficiently expansionary monetary policy, because of the Zero Lower Bound of interest rates. Interestingly, we show that the launch of the ECB Quantitative Easing turned the monetary stance into more accommodative, preventing deflationary outcomes. In the third Chapter we provide an empirical evaluation of the existence of a "dark side" of monetary policy, i.e. the possibility that credit spreads abruptly rise following a monetary tightening, after being compressed by an extraordinary period of monetary easing. This would create a problematic trade--off for the central bank, as temporary monetary expansions might at once stimulate the economy and sow the seeds of abrupt and costly financial market corrections in the future in terms of risks for financial stability (Stein, 2014).We investigate this possibility using data for the US by exploiting non-linear methods to examine the propagation of monetary shocks through US corporate bond markets. Across different methodologies, we find that the transmission of monetary shocks is mostly symmetric. What is asymmetric is instead the impact of macroeconomic data releases: spreads respond more to bad news. Crucially, these responses anticipate economic slowdowns rather than causing them directly.However, empirical evidence points to the possibility of larger effects of expansionary monetary shocks depending on (i) the type of non-linear estimation technique (ii) the identification of the shock and (iii) the inclusion of unconventional measures in the analysis. Finally, in the fourth Chapter, we ask whether the FED has riskily delayed the exit from its large monetary easing, increasing the probability of a future inflationary burst. We do so by means of medium and larger scale Bayesian VAR, which we use for both structural analysis, i.e. the evaluation of monetary policy shocks, and forecasting, i.e. the running of counterfactuals and scenario analysis.We show that expansionary monetary policy did not trigger a large deviation of inflation from its steady state. Furthermore, the FED monetary stance is totally in line with the concurrent macroeconomic dynamics. Last, our model predicts that US core inflation will lie well below its 2% target in 2017, a finding only recently acknowledged by the FOMC projections. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Aiming to speak to broader debates about the nature of state power in relation to the economy this thesis concentrates on central bank agency and monetary governability. More specifically, it focuses on a single case: The agency of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the making, unmaking, and re-making of monetary governability in the euro area from 1999 through 2014. This choice is motivated by the euro area representing a unique ‘natural experiment’ in establishing monetary governability from scratch under conditions of 21st century financialised capitalism. The thesis is divided into two parts. Chapters one and two develop an original analytical and conceptual framework for the study of central bank agency. Starting out from the premise that governability is not a natural feature of the economy but needs to be actively established, I argue that any attempt to answer the question of the ECB’s role in that process has to account for the fundamental hybridity of central bank agency both as a central bureaucratic authority and as a bank, as well as for its multidimensionality as it addresses different governability challenges posed by different audiences. It is on the basis of these inductively won observations that I embrace the theoretical vocabulary of performativity, conceptualising governability as a performative effect of the interactions between the ECB and its audiences. The arrangements that govern these interactions are described, using a Foucauldian concept, as ‘apparatuses’. On that basis, the second part of the thesis comprises three empirical chapters on the financial apparatus of monetary policy implementation, the communicative apparatus of expectation management, and the ideological apparatus of monetary trust. The sixth chapter brings the analysis of the three apparatuses up to date by focusing on three key episodes from the recent financial and economic crisis. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The thesis contains four essays covering topics in the field of real time econometrics and forecasting.<p><p>The first Chapter, entitled “An area wide real time data base for the euro area” and coauthored with Domenico Giannone, Jerome Henry and Magda Lalik, describes how we constructed a real time database for the euro area covering more than 200 series regularly published in the European Central Bank Monthly Bulletin, as made available ahead of publication to the Governing Council members before their first meeting of the month.<p><p>Recent research has emphasised that the data revisions can be large for certain indicators and can have a bearing on the decisions made, as well as affect the assessment of their relevance. It is therefore key to be in a position to reconstruct the historical environment of economic decisions at the time they were made by private agents and policy-makers rather than using the data as they become available some years later. For this purpose, it is necessary to have the information in the form of all the different vintages of data as they were published in real time, the so-called "real-time data" that reflect the economic situation at a given point in time when models are estimated or policy decisions made.<p><p>We describe the database in details and study the properties of the euro area real-time data flow and data revisions, also providing comparisons with the United States and Japan. We finally illustrate how such revisions can contribute to the uncertainty surrounding key macroeconomic ratios and the NAIRU.<p><p>The second Chapter entitled “Maximum likelihood estimation of large factor model on datasets with arbitrary pattern of missing data” is based on a joint work with Marta Banbura. It proposes a methodology for the estimation of factor models on large cross-sections with a general pattern of missing data. In contrast to Giannone et al (2008), we can handle datasets that are not only characterised by a 'ragged edge', but can include e.g. mixed frequency or short history indicators. The latter is particularly relevant for the euro area or other young economies, for which many series have been compiled only since recently. We adopt the maximum likelihood approach, which, apart from the flexibility with regard to the pattern of missing data, is also more efficient and allows imposing restrictions on the parameters. It has been shown by Doz et al (2006) to be consistent, robust and computationally feasible also in the case of large cross-sections. To circumvent the computational complexity of a direct likelihood maximisation in the case of large cross-section, Doz et al (2006) propose to use the iterative Expectation-Maximisation (EM) algorithm. Our contribution is to modify the EM steps to the case of missing data and to show how to augment the model in order to account for the serial correlation of the idiosyncratic component. In addition, we derive the link between the unexpected part of a data release and the forecast revision and illustrate how this can be used to understand the sources of the latter in the case of simultaneous releases.<p><p>We use this methodology for short-term forecasting and backdating of the euro area GDP on the basis of a large panel of monthly and quarterly data.<p><p>The third Chapter is entitled “Nowcasting Inflation Using High Frequency Data” and it proposes a methodology for nowcasting and forecasting inflation using data with sampling frequency higher than monthly. In particular, this Chapter focuses on the energy component of inflation given the availability of data like the Weekly Oil Bulletin Price Statistics for the euro area, the Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices for the US and the daily spot and future prices of crude oil.<p><p>Although nowcasting inflation is a novel idea, there is a rather long literature focusing on nowcasting GDP. The use of higher frequency indicators in order to Nowcast/Forecast lower frequency indicators had started with monthly data for GDP. GDP is a quarterly variable released with a substantial time delay (e.g. two months after the end of the reference quarter for the euro area GDP). <p><p>The estimation adopts the methodology described in Chapter 2, modeling the data as a trading day frequency factor model with missing observations in a state space representation. In contrast to other procedures, the methodology proposed models all the data within a unified single framework that allows one to produce forecasts of all the involved variables from a factor model, which, by definition, does not suffer from overparametrisation. Moreover, this offers the possibility to disentangle model-based "news" from each release and then to assess their impact on the forecast revision. The Chapter provides an illustrative example of this procedure, focusing on a specific month.<p><p>In order to assess the importance of using high frequency data for forecasting inflation this Chapter compares the forecast performance of the univariate models, i.e. random walk and autoregressive process, with the forecast performance of the model that uses weekly and daily data. The provided empirical evidence shows that exploiting high frequency data relative to oil not only let us nowcast and forecast the energy component of inflation with a precision twice better than the proposed benchmarks, but we obtain a similar improvement even for total inflation.<p><p>The fourth Chapter entitled “The forecasting power of international yield curve linkages”, coauthored with Kleopatra Nikolaou, investigates dependency patterns between the yield curves of Germany and the US, by using an out-of-sample forecast exercise.<p><p>The motivation for this Chapter stems from the fact that our up to date knowledge on dependency patterns among yields curves of different countries is limited. Looking at the yield curve literature, the empirical evidence to-date informs us of strong contemporaneous interdependencies of yield curves across countries, in line with increased globalization and financial integration. Nevertheless, this yield curve literature does not investigate non-contemporaneous correlations. And yet, clear indication in favour of such dependency patterns is recorded in studies focusing on specific interest rates, which look at the role of certain countries as global players (see Frankel et al. (2004), Chinn and Frankel (2005) and Wang et al. (2007)). Evidence from these studies suggests a leading role for the US. Moreover, dependency patterns recorded in the real business cycles between the US and the euro area (Giannone and Reichlin, 2007) can also rationalize such linkages, to the extent that output affects nominal interest rates.<p><p>We propose, estimate and forecast (out-of-sample) a novel dynamic factor model for the yield curve, where dynamic information from foreign yield curves is introduced into domestic yield curve forecasts. This is the International Dependency Model (IDM). We want to compare the yield curve forecast under the IDM versus a purely domestic model and a model that allows for contemporaneous common global factors. These models serve as useful comparisons. The domestic model bears direct modeling links with IDM, as it can be seen as a nested model of IDM. The global model bears less direct links in terms of modeling, but, in line with IDM, it is also an international model that serves to highlight the advantages of introducing international information in yield curve forecasts. However, the global model aims to identify contemporaneous linkages in the yield curve of the two countries, whereas the IDM also allows for detecting dependency patterns.<p><p>Our results that shocks appear to be diffused in a rather asymmetric manner across the two countries. Namely, we find a unidirectional causality effect that runs from the US to Germany. This effect is stronger in the last ten years, where out-of-sample forecasts of Germany using the US information are even more accurate than the random walk forecasts. Our statistical results demonstrate a more independent role for the US. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The accession to the European Monetary Union is fundamentally changing the role of the Czech national bank. Aim of this work is to describe and evaluate this new role of the CNB in connection with the transfer of its former powers to the ECB. The theoretical part of the work deals with the role of central banking in general, the role of the CNB before the accession to the EMU and the role of ECB in monetary union. The work reviews compliance with the conditions required for the accession to the EMU. Further it focuses on the analysis of CNB monetary policy in recent years, particularly its interest rates policy. In view of the future situation in the field of monetary policy the work draws on the experience of Slovakia after its entry into the euro zone and respondes to the question of whether uniform monetary policy is equally applicable to all member states of the euro area by using the Theory of Optimum Currency Area. The work also analyzes the actions of the ECB and the CNB caused by the current economic crisis.

This thesis focuses on analysis of current problems of so called "South wing countries" of EMU and Ireland (countries which are being called "PIIGS") from the theory of optimum currency area point of view. It uses the static and dynamic version of the theory as a framework for analyzing the problems of internal and external imbalance within those countries and mainly the connection between current accounts deficits, high level of private and public debts, loss of competitiveness in international trade and high percent of unemployment. The thesis comes with a conclusion that the main factors behind the crisis were inflation and inflation expectations which then through different inflation differentials created asymmetric shocks in monetary policy. This inflation differential phenomenon is described in Walters critique and with other theories creates the basis of analytical part. In the appendix it assesses the readiness of Czech Republic for accepting the euro, based on the analysis made in this thesis.

This diploma thesis describes a logistic problem of the company JACER-CZ Ltd. The main focus is on identifying optimal routes about the Euro pallets distribution. The Euro pallets are standardized at length replaceable transport pallets which are in Europe. The aim of this thesis is to find a solution which will meet requirements of all thirteen customers and simultaneously a total route length of all vans will be minimalized. At first there is the mathematical model about the delivery assignment with the split delivery vehicle calculated by solvers CPLEX and Gurobi. Then the original and the modified example is solved manually by heuristic algorithms. It is concerned the nearest neighbour algorithm, savings algorithm, the insertion algorithm and the heuristic method for the split delivery vehicle routing problem.

This diploma thesis - The evolution of Great Britain's, Germany's and the Czech Republic's stance on the European monetary integration - analyses the development of approaches of the states mentioned above. It assesses the pros and cons of this process. The research is carried out in such a manner that after analyzing a rather pro-European and one rather anti-European stance a synthesis of approaches is done. As a result, a recommendation to join the euro is given to the Czech Republic.

This work is aimed to determine whether the Czech Republic is ready to enter to the third stage of European economic and monetary union which is associated with the adoption of the euro, and that regarding the fulfillment of the formal entry criteria and also in terms of alignment of the Czech economy with the rest of the eurozone. On that basis evaluate whether it is advantageous for the country to adopt the euro. The first part introduces the different stages of regional integration, as well as the theory of optimum currency areas and economic governance in the European Union. The second chapter is devoted to evaluate the readiness of the Czech Republic to join the euro zone from three perspectives. First, fulfillment of nominal convergence criteria is evaluated. Real convergence and macroeconomic imbalances within the euro area are assessed using cluster analysis. The second approach is to analyze whether EMU constitute an optimal currency area. At the end the experience, of three countries of the eastern enlargement, with changeover to a common currency are presented.

The aim of the thesis is to analyze the process of nominal and real convergence of the Czech Republic to the average of the European Union (EU-27). The text uses comparison with other european transition economies (Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia). The thesis consists of an analysis of the progress of real GDP per capita, comparative price level, labor productivity, employment, labor costs and other indicators. Other topics such as alternative indicators of economical convergence or the accession of the Czech republic into the euro-zone are discussed.