International finance is often understood to be a rational practice, taking place within an autonomous, coherent and clearly bounded structure. This thesis questions the naturalness implied by such understandings of the international financial system. It argues that the contingencies and ambiguities of financial history have been largely written out of the discipline of International Political Economy (IPE) in general and the study of international finance in particular. The thesis presents a detailed account of the conceptual histories that enable us to think of a domain called finance. It does so in terms of a 'genealogy,' the concept offered by French philosopher Michel Foucault to denote a historical study that resists being a linear and frictionless account of the emergence of modern practices. A genealogy of finance discusses the continggeenntt emergence of fi'n ancial thought, thus arguing that no logical or evolutionary trajectory for the development of fi' nancial rationality was implicit in history or human nature. The thesis analyses a range of archival materials debating the emerging fin ' ancial sphere in London and NewYork, beginning with the birth of the credit economy in seventeenth-century England and proceeding into to the 1990s. The analysis' looks at political contestations over understandings of time and money, the gendered discourse of credit and credibility, the proper meaning of the free market, understandings of financial crisis, the morality of speculation, the differences between gambling and fin' ance, and the imagination of fi' nance as a rational and scientific practice. The thesis emphasises how these political controversies assume, in' yoke and debate a subject called 'fin ' ancial man.' The debates analysed in this thesis have shaped the regulatory and institutional structures of modern in ' ternational fin ' ance. In an era when fin ' ancial practices are closed off from democratic politics through the assertion that fin' ance is too specialist for broad-based public debate, the exposure of contingencies and ambiguities in financial practices must be regarded as a political critique.

Do corporate bond spreads reflect fear of debt deflation? Most corporate bonds have fixed nominal face values, so unexpectedly low inflation raises firms' real debt burdens and increases default risk. The first chapter develops a real business cycle model with time-varying inflation risk and optimal, but infrequent, capital structure choice. In this model, more volatile or more procyclical inflation lead to quantitatively important credit spread increases. This is true even with inflation volatility as moderate as that in developed economies since 1970. Intuitively, this result obtains because inflation persistence generates large uncertainty about the price level at long maturities and because firms cannot adjust their capital structure immediately. We find strong empirical support for our model predictions in a panel of six developed economies. Both inflation volatility and the inflation-stock return correlation have varied substantially over time and across countries. They jointly explain as much variation in credit spreads as do equity volatility and the dividend-price ratio. Credit spreads rise by 15 basis points if either inflation volatility or the inflation-stock return correlation increases by one standard deviation. Firms counteract higher debt financing costs by adjusting their capital structure in times of higher inflation uncertainty. The second chapter empirically decomposes excess return predictability in inflation-indexed and nominal government bonds into liquidity, market segmentation, real interest rate risk and inflation risk. This chapter finds evidence for time-varying liquidity premia in Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) and for time-varying liquidity premia in TIPS and for time-varying inflation risk premia in nominal bonds. The third chapter develops a pre-test for weak instruments in linear instrumental variable regression that is robust to heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation. Our test statistic is a scaled version of the regular first-stage F statistic. The critical values depend on the long-run variance-covariance matrix of the first stage. We apply our pre-test to the instrumental variable estimation of the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution and find that instruments previously considered not to be weak do not exceed our threshold.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:48:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alexandre Favaro Lucchesi.pdf: 1416320 bytes, checksum: b23b6c56842617763c8ed3c1f14fa5e6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-05-18 / The main objective is to investigate the movements of change and continuity in Bank Of Brazil (BB) policies through the period of Lula government (2003-2010), based on a comparison of this period and the one correspondent to president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002). It is also in focus to purpose and evaluate statistics of the BB as a joint capital company, what demands to analyze its capability to respond both to the controlling shareholder (the National Treasure, once it is a state owned bank) and the commercial bank logic that is, to achieve financial profits. In addition, this work discusses the role of BB during the international credit crises and attempts to offer elements for a better analysis of Lula government. Therefore literature with discussions about state owned banks is reviewed. In addition, it is provided data research of Brazilian financial system, BB and Brazilian private banks as big as BB. The general conclusion is that the BB is presenting an increasingly commercial aspect, although the bank remains an important instrument of government policies and has presented a central performance during the crises / A dissertação trata da trajetória do Banco do Brasil (BB) no período correspondente ao governo Lula (2003-2010), tendo por objetivo investigar as principais mudanças e a continuidade no caráter da atividade do banco, comparando principalmente com o que se verificou no governo FHC (1995-2002). Faz parte do escopo deste trabalho a proposição e a utilização de indicadores para avaliar o desempenho do BB como empresa de economia mista, o que implica analisar sua atuação tanto no atendimento às políticas públicas delineadas pelo seu acionista principal, o Tesouro Nacional (o que diz respeito ao seu caráter de banco público), como na atividade comercial bancária, de intermediação financeira. Também é objetivo deste trabalho estudar o papel do BB na crise internacional de crédito, assim como oferecer elementos em geral para a análise do período Lula. Para tanto, é feita uma revisão da literatura que aborda o debate sobre o papel dos bancos públicos, e em seguida são levantados os dados disponíveis do sistema financeiro nacional, do BB e de bancos privados nacionais do mesmo porte para contextualizar sua atuação. Em linhas gerais, o trabalho aponta para um peso crescente da atividade comercial no BB, ainda que opere importantes políticas do governo e tenha apresentado um papel central durante a crise

Résumé. Le mémoire s’intéresse à l’émergence historique de la coopération économique régionale comme forme non-hégémonique de coopération. Nous y proposons une approche alternative au problème de l’origine de la coopération systémique, par rapport à la conception d’origine hégémonique de la coopération systémique, propre aux théories néolibérale et néoréaliste. Plutôt que par le biais des théories du marché, l’origine de la coopération est approchée par le biais des processus caractérisant l’anarchie-même tel le processus de construction anarchique des formes de guerre. Et plus spécifiquement, des formes de guerre dont l’usage soumet la structure anarchique à des contraintes extrêmes, mettant celle-ci en crise, exemplifiée par la chute de la puissance hégémonique, la fin d’un système hégémonique et le début de coopération systémique non-hégémonique, de nature plus régionale et économique. En privilégiant l’approche historique, nous insistons notamment sur l’impact critique du commerce au loin et du crédit international dans la construction par la structure anarchique des formes de guerre que la puissance hégémonique ne peut plus supporter. / Historical origins of regional economic cooperation as a non-hegemonic form of cooperation. Abstract. This thesis examines the emergence of the regional economic cooperation as a non-hegemonic form of cooperation. We propose an alternative to the prevailing conception of hegemonic origin of systemic cooperation, proposed by the neorealist and neoliberal theories. Rather than relying on theories of the market, we focus instead on some critical processes of the anarchical structure itself, such as creation of forms of war by anarchy. More specifically, we focus on the forms of war that put the anarchical structure under maximal strain, bringing it to an overwhelming systemic crisis, the fall of a hegemonic power, the end of a hegemonic system, and the onset of a non-hegemonic systemic cooperation of more regional and economic nature. Prioritizing the historical approach we stress especially the role of long-distance trade and international credit in the construction, by the anarchical structure itself, of forms of war impossible for the hegemonic power to withstand.

Résumé. Le mémoire s’intéresse à l’émergence historique de la coopération économique régionale comme forme non-hégémonique de coopération. Nous y proposons une approche alternative au problème de l’origine de la coopération systémique, par rapport à la conception d’origine hégémonique de la coopération systémique, propre aux théories néolibérale et néoréaliste. Plutôt que par le biais des théories du marché, l’origine de la coopération est approchée par le biais des processus caractérisant l’anarchie-même tel le processus de construction anarchique des formes de guerre. Et plus spécifiquement, des formes de guerre dont l’usage soumet la structure anarchique à des contraintes extrêmes, mettant celle-ci en crise, exemplifiée par la chute de la puissance hégémonique, la fin d’un système hégémonique et le début de coopération systémique non-hégémonique, de nature plus régionale et économique. En privilégiant l’approche historique, nous insistons notamment sur l’impact critique du commerce au loin et du crédit international dans la construction par la structure anarchique des formes de guerre que la puissance hégémonique ne peut plus supporter. / Historical origins of regional economic cooperation as a non-hegemonic form of cooperation. Abstract. This thesis examines the emergence of the regional economic cooperation as a non-hegemonic form of cooperation. We propose an alternative to the prevailing conception of hegemonic origin of systemic cooperation, proposed by the neorealist and neoliberal theories. Rather than relying on theories of the market, we focus instead on some critical processes of the anarchical structure itself, such as creation of forms of war by anarchy. More specifically, we focus on the forms of war that put the anarchical structure under maximal strain, bringing it to an overwhelming systemic crisis, the fall of a hegemonic power, the end of a hegemonic system, and the onset of a non-hegemonic systemic cooperation of more regional and economic nature. Prioritizing the historical approach we stress especially the role of long-distance trade and international credit in the construction, by the anarchical structure itself, of forms of war impossible for the hegemonic power to withstand.