No description available.

In this dissertation I incorporate high dimensional data vectors in estimated Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models, evaluating the labor market dynamics incorporated inside such data vectors, out-of-sample forecasting performance of many models estimated with such data vectors and analytically examining the reduction of macroeconomic volatility that can occur when such data vectors are used in the formation of expectations about the future. The second chapter investigates the extent to which modern DSGE models can produce labor market dynamics in response to a financial crisis that are consistent with the experience of the Great Recession. I estimate two New-Keynesian models, one with and one without financial frictions, in a data-rich environment. I find that negative financial shocks are associated with longer recoveries in real investment, capital-intensive sectors of the labor market and average unemployment duration. I also find the model with a financial accelerator is equipped with better tools to identify the dynamics associated with the Great Recession and its recovery in regard to many labor and financial metrics. The third chapter compares the out-of-sample forecasting performance of the two DSGE models of Chapter II when they are estimated both out of and in a data-rich environment. This chapter finds that many financial time series variance decomposition are significantly better explained using the structural set-up of the New-Keynesian model with financial frictions. DSGE models estimated with high dimensional data vectors significantly out forecast their regularly estimated counterpart in regard to output, investment and consumption growth. Lastly, the use of real-time optimal pool model weighting significantly out-forecasts traditional macroeconomic models as well as an equally weighted weighting scheme in terms of many macroeconomic variables. The fourth chapter examines the role forecasts derived by high dimensional data vectors can have on lowering macroeconomic volatility. Bounded rational agents are introduced into the Chapter II DSGE model with financial frictions and are given the option to use or ignore professionally generated forecasts from a dynamic factor model in their perceived forecasting model. In simulations, I find that professionally generated forecasts can significantly lower the volatility of many macroeconomic variables including inflation and hours worked.

This dissertation includes three chapters. The first chapter studies the impact of financial shocks and financial frictions on business cycle dynamics in China's economy. The second and third chapters focus on the driving force of structural change and its impact on aggregate fluctuations using an input-output network approach. In the second chapter, I study two questions: (i) How has the U.S. production network structure changed from 1970 to 2017? (ii) What impact does that have on aggregate fluctuations? This paper shows that a few industries, like Finance and Insurance and Professional Services, have become much more central input suppliers over time, while others, like Paper Manufacturing, have become far less important. Therefore, the third chapter considers the driving force behind such structural change. In particular, I study the question of what determines the size of an industry in a production network. China has been one of the world's fastest-growing economies over the past several decades and emerged quickly from the global financial crisis of 2008. Chapter 1, titled DO FINANCIAL SHOCKS DRIVE REAL BUSINESS FLUCTUATIONS IN CHINA, investigates to what extent financial shocks can shape business cycle fluctuations in China. Specifically, I document the cyclical properties of China's macroeconomy and financial market and show the procyclicality of dividend payout and the countercyclicality of debt repurchases with real GDP. To account for these features, I use the real business cycle model incorporating debt and equity financing developed by Jermann and Quadrini (2012) to study how the dynamics of macroeconomic and financial variables are affected by financial shocks in China. This paper finds that financial shocks contribute significantly to business cycle fluctuations in China and can account for over 60% of the variations in the growth rate of output, investment, hours worked, and debt repurchases. Hulton's Theorem states that the impact of an industry-specific shock on the aggregate economy is entirely captured by the size of this industry, regardless of its position in the production network. Chapter 2, titled THE IMPORTANCE OF INPUT-OUTPUT NETWORK STRUCTURE IN THE US ECONOMY, proposes the idea that the network structure in isolation plays an essential role in shaping GDP growth and growth volatility. First, I introduce a new measure of network structure named centrality dispersion and document that the U.S. production network has become sparsely connected from 1970 to 2017, where many industries relied on a few central input suppliers for production. Such changes are associated with slower GDP growth and higher volatility. To account for this evidence, I embed input-output linkages into a multisector real business cycle model and provide a nonlinear characterization of the impact of network structure quantified using centrality dispersion on the macroeconomy. Finally, I study model-implied relationships between production network structure, GDP growth, and growth volatility. The calibrated model accounts for approximately one-quarter of the variation in real GDP growth and 40% of GDP volatility, as observed in the data. Chapter 3, titled THE NETWORK ORIGIN OF INDUSTRY SIZE VARIATIONS, quantifies the origin of industry size variations using the features of a production network. In the analysis, I perform an exact variance decomposition of industry total sales into the supplier, buyer, and final demand components. The findings suggest that matching with many buyers in the network, especially many large buyers is essential in understanding industry size variations. More importantly, these buyer characteristics have become increasingly important in contributing to industry size variations over the 1967-2012 period. Finally, I provide new empirical evidence related to the decomposition results. The evidence reveals a strengthening negative correlation between industry size and the concentration of customer networks in the long run. / Economics

La question centrale qui chapeaute cette thèse est : quelle sont les sources des fluctuations économiques ? De nombreux articles mettent en évidence le rôle majeur des facteurs et chocs financiers. A partir de ce postulat, j'analyse la capacité des modèles macroéconomiques dynamiques à reproduire les co-mouvements observés dans les données entre la production, la consommation, l'investissement et l'emploi, suite à un choc financier. Le premier chapitre montre que les modèles standards n'arrivent pas à générer ces co-mouvements, car ils impliquent des mouvements opposés entre la consommation et l'investissement. Une solution est de modéliser des banques qui prêtent à la fois aux entreprises et aux ménages, puis de considérer le choc financier comme un resserrement simultané des contraintes de crédit des deux types d'emprunteurs. Le second chapitre est une évaluation quantitative de cette idée. Avec David Gauthier, nous estimons un riche modèle macroéconomique sur données américaines à l'aide de méthodes bayésiennes. Nous motivons notre choc de collatéral par l'observation que les banques américaines ajustent les conditions de crédit de manière similaire pour les firmes et les ménages. Nous trouvons que le choc de collatéral explique une large partie des fluctuations économiques, car il est capable de générer les co-mouvements. Le troisième chapitre est l'étape suivante. Je souhaite endogénéiser les conditions de prêts bancaires. L'idée est de reproduire la récession de 2008, au cours de laquelle un choc dans le marché immobilier affectant initialement les ménages a été transmis au reste de l'économie à travers les banques qui ont diminué le crédit alloué aux entreprises. / The main question at the heart of this thesis is, what drives business cycle fluctuations? A growing body of evidence suggests that financial factors and shocks matter most. Based on this premise, I ask whether financial shocks in dynamic macroeconomic models can generate the positive co-movements in output, consumption, investment, and hours worked observed in the data. The first chapter shows that standard models fail in doing so, because they typically imply a countercyclical response of consumption. One solution is to have banks lend both to firms and households, and to assume, that the financial shock is a common credit tightening on both. The second chapter offers a quantitative analysis of this idea. Together with David Gauthier, we motivate what we call the collateral shock by documenting that banks in the US effectively adjust standards in a similar way regard less if the borrower is a firm or a household. We estimate a rich macroeconomic model with Bayesian methods on US financial and macro data over the 1985-2015 period. We find that the collateral shock is the main driver of economic fluctuations. The reason is the collateral shock is able to generate pro cyclical consumption, investment, hours, and credit to firms and households, which are features of US business cycles. The third chapter attempts to go a step further by making lending standards endogenous. The idea is to have banks act as a propagation channel. A shock that emerges in the housing market and that initially affects households is transmitted to firms by a panic-prone financial sector that tightens credit to businesses. This model would replicate the story of the 2008 recession in the United States.

La globalisation est probablement la caractéristique principale de l'économie mondiale du 21e siècle. Elle se traduit notamment par l'intégration par les canaux commerciaux, financiers et les marchés de matières premières. Si un tel contexte affecte de manière très significative tous les types d'économies, il convient de souligner que les petites économies ouvertes dépendantes des exportations de matières premières, et ouvertes aux marchés financiers globaux, sont en général les plus exposées. L'économie chilienne possède toutes ces caractéristiques. C’est dans ce contexte que cette thèse explore l'efficacité de la politique budgétaire chilienne et les effets des prix des matières premières et des chocs financiers internationaux sur le PIB chilien et d'autres variables macro-économiques importantes. A cette fin, on utilise une approche empirique basée sur des modèles vectoriels autorégressifs. / The economic globalization is probably the main feature of the 21st century world economy, with economic integration and interdependence of national economies across the world particularly common in commodity and financial markets. Such a context greatly affect all types of economies though those small, dependent on commodity exports, and open to global financial markets are usually the most exposed. Having in mind this scenario, in this Ph.D. dissertation we explore the effectiveness of the Chilean fiscal policy and the effects of commodity prices and foreign financial shocks, on the Chilean GDP and other macroeconomic fundamentals using an empirical approach based on alternative vector autoregressive models.To understand the effectiveness of the country’s fiscal policy aiming at guarantying macroeconomic stability, in the Chapter 1 of this Ph.D. dissertation we study the dynamic effects of fiscal policy on the Chilean macroeconomic fundamentals and the size of fiscal multipliers. Chapter 2 examines how shocks to commodity prices affect the Chilean economic output, fiscal accounts and private consumption, based on correlations analysis and vector autoregression models. In the Chapter 3 of this Ph.D. dissertation we study the effect of foreign financial shocks on the Chilean real economy.

Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit der Rolle der Unternehmenskreditfinanzierung für die Realwirtschaft. Im ersten Teil untersuche ich die Entwicklung der externen Finanzierungsprämien in den USA in Folge von ökonomischen Schocks und finde, dass die Prämie antizyklisch auf Angebots- und monetäre Schocks reagiert. Im zweiten Teil analysiere ich mit Hilfe eines DSGE-Modells, wie die Zusammenfassung aus Bankkreditfinanzierung und Anleihefinanzierung die Transmission von ökonomischen Schocks beeinflusst. Angenommen, dass große Unternehmen größtenteils Anleihenmärkte verwenden und kleine Unternehmen auf Bankkredite angewiesen sind, zeigt das Modell, dass die Zusammensetzung des Unternehmenskreditfinanzierung relevant für die Verbreitung von Schocks ist. Negative monetäre Schocks und Finanzschocks beeinträchtigen die Kreditvergabe von fragilen Banken, die in Folge die Bankkredite an kleine Unternehmen kürzen. Unternehmen, die auf Anleihenfinanzierung zurückgreifen können, können sich in Zeiten steigender Prämien über Unternehmensanleihen refinanzieren. Daher reduzieren diese Unternehmen nicht in so starken Ausmaß ihre Investitionen wie kleine Firmen. Als Folge davon, ist eine Volkswirtschaft, die nur auf Bankkredite angewiesen ist, stärker von Schocks betroffen als eine Volkswirtschaft mit sowohl Bank- als auch Anleihenfinanzierung. Abschließend wird das Modell verwendet, um eine Kombination konventioneller und unkoventioneller Geldpolitik sowie makroprudentieller Politik in einer Ökonomie mit segmentierten Kreditmärkten zu evaluieren. Es wird gezeigt, dass der optimale Politikmix die höchsten Wohlfahrtsgewinne in Folge von Finanzschocks erreicht. / This thesis examines the role of corporate debt financing for the real economy. First, I study the conditional dynamics of the external finance premium using US data and find that the premium is countercyclical following supply and monetary policy shocks. Second, I analyze to which extent bank and bond financing affect the transmission of economic shocks in the context of a DSGE model. To the extent that large firms predominantly use capital market finance, whereas small firms rely on bank loans, the model predicts that the composition of corporate debt is relevant for the propagation of shocks. Contractionary monetary policy and financial shocks impair the ability of leveraged banks to provide loans, which adversely affects small firms. Bond financing dependent firms can nevertheless issue bonds in times of rising bond finance premia. These firms do not reduce their investments as strongly as bank financing dependent firms. As a consequence, the economy that relies only on bank credit is affected more by shocks than the economy with bank and bond finance. Finally, the model is used to evaluate the optimal mix of conventional, unconventional and macroprudential policies for segmented credit markets. I find that the optimal policy mix attains the highest welfare gains following financial shocks.