This thesis analyses determinants for structural reforms in the euro area. First, it is theoretically scrutinized how the common monetary policy of the European Central Bank causes a reform bias between small and large countries. Second, it is examined how private market adjustment, structural reforms and their interaction affect the intra-euro area current account balances of euro area countries. Third, it is analysed how an asymmetric foreign asset and liability distribution across the euro area affects single countries need for structural reforms of labour markets. Fourth, the impact of fiscal stabilization policy on structural reform activity will be examined.

This dissertation consists of three related chapters that study financial market volatility, jumps and the economic factors behind them. Each of the chapters analyzes a different aspect of this problem. The first chapter examines tests for jumps based on recent asymptotic results. Monte Carlo evidence suggests that the daily ratio z-statistic has appropriate size, good power, and good jump detection capabilities revealed by the confusion matrix comprised of jump classification probabilities. Theoretical and Monte Carlo analysis indicate that microstructure noise biases the tests against detecting jumps, and that a simple lagging strategy corrects the bias. Empirical work documents evidence for jumps that account for seven percent of stock market price variance. Building on realized variance and bi-power variation measures constructed from high-frequency financial prices, the second chapter proposes a simple reduced form framework for modelling and forecasting daily return volatility. The chapter first decomposes the total daily return variance into three components, and proposes different models for the different variance components: an approximate long-memory HAR-GARCH model for the daytime continuous variance, an ACH model for the jump occurrence hazard rate, a log-linear structure for the conditional jump size, and an augmented GARCH model for the overnight variance. Then the chapter combines the different models to generate an overall forecasting framework, which improves the volatility forecasts for the daily, weekly and monthly horizons. The third chapter studies the economic factors that generate financial market volatility and jumps. It extends the recent literature by separating market responses into continuous variance and discontinuous jumps, and differentiating the market’s disagreement and uncertainty. The chapter finds that there are more large jumps on news days than on no-news days, with the fixed-income market being more responsive than the equity market, and non-farm payroll employment being the most influential news. Surprises in forecasts impact volatility and jumps in the fixed-income market more than the equity market, while disagreement and uncertainty influence both markets with different effects on volatility and jumps. JEL classification: C1, C2, C5, C51, C52, F3, F4, G1, G14 / Dissertation

In the process of China's rapid economic growth, Chinese Communist Party implemented a series of macro-economic policies --- fiscal policies and monetary policies --- to regulate its economy. As a result, it safely passed through the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the world financial tsunami in 2008, and was able to continue steady growth. This dissertation focuses, under the Chinese Communist economic system, on how to apply the macro policy to control its growth and what has been the practical impact. What role is macro-control playing in the process of China's economic development? Macro-economic policy is actually the main driving force behind China's economic performance. This dissertation emphasizes that under China's unique political economy, macro-control leads China's rapid economic growth. Nevertheless, due to China's economic structure of market imperfections, and the lack of inherent stability of the market mechanism, the Chinese macroeconomic regulation and control has easily lead to economic volatility and to a possible hard crash in years ahead. Although the experience accumulated so far has led to a relatively stable economy, the economic structure is still incomplete. This dissertation argues that China's macro-control¡¦s aggregate demand in driving China's economy needs to be adjusted from investment and export to personal consumption in order to contribute to sustainable economic development in the future.

This purpose behind this study is to develop a model for forecasting the performance of the Taiwanese economy based on monthly time series data. We first extract the useful factors through factor analysis. Next, we rank the factor scores according to the rules of the trend and interpret the scores as signals to buy or sell appropriately. Our main result is that the Sharpe ratio of out-of-sample back-testing from January 2007 to December 2010 is 0.48, indicating an ability to forecast financial crises. In addition, a Sharpe ratio of 0.95 during the 2008 financial crisis suggests that our model may have been effective in predicting this crisis. Moreover, the macroeconomic factor model can provide better forecasting skills during financial crises. To conclude, this research may be of importance in explaining the relationship between macroeconomic variables and the business cycle, as well as in providing investors with better forecasting signals of the stock market in Taiwan.

Affine term structure models (ATSMs) are known to have a trade-off in predicting future Treasury yields and fitting the time-varying volatility of interest rates. First, I empirically study the role of macroeconomic variables in simultaneously achieving these two goals under affine models. To this end, I incorporate a liquidity demand theory via a measure of the velocity of money into affine models. I find that this considerably reduces the statistical tension between matching the first and second moments of interest rates. In terms of forecasting yields, the models with the velocity of money outperform among the ATSMs examined, including those with inflation and real activity. My result is robust across maturities, forecasting horizons, risk price specifications, and the number of latent factors. Next, I incorporate latent macro factors and the spread factor between the short-term Treasury yield and the federal funds rate into an affine term structure model by imposing cross-equation restrictions from no-arbitrage using daily data. In doing so, I identify the highfrequency monetary policy rule that describes the central bank's reaction to expected inflation and real activity at daily frequency. I find that my affine model with macro factors and the spread factor shows better forecasting performance.

The presented thesis has closely examined the discussion on policy assignments that are restricted on an open macroeconomic model; very little reference has focused on a closed macroeconomic model. As we know, Ramirez (1986) is the first person who has applied policy assignment to a closed macroeconomic model. But Chang and Lai have clearly proved that Ramirez's model is not appropriate for policy assignment, and a way to redeem the problem is to introduce policy instrument to aggregate supply side. Also, this thesis is going to focus on, instead of introduced the policy instrument to aggregate supply side, use system endogenous on aggregate supply function. Could this kind of correction redeem the flaws made by Ramirez? Hence, this thesis would apply the reality intertemporal substitution effect of labor to subsume an aggregate supply side, then discuss the relationship on policy assignment that is between policy instrument and policy target that would derive the conclusion as below: When a model does not include the intertemporal substitution effect of labor, it degrades to a Ramirez's model (1986) and cannot be used for policy assignment. On the other hand, a model including intertemporal substitution effect of labor remedies the flaws in Ramirez's model (1986) and can be used for appropriate policy assignment assuming that government spending is in complement with private spending.

Interactions between macroeconomic fundamentals and term structure of interest rates be stronger according to the way of changes in structure of worldwide economy. Combined macro-finance analysis determines the joint dynamics of term structure of interest rates and macroeconomic fundamentals. This thesis provides analysis of two existing macro-finance models and an original one. Parameter estimations for these three macro-finance term structure models are done for monthly Turkish data by use of an efficient recursive estimator Kalman filter. In spite of the small scale application the results are satisfactory except first model but with longer sets of macroeconomic variables and interest rate data models provide more encouraging results.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the sufficiency of Turkey for joining the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union (EMU) in terms of similarity and convergence. The study has been conducted in a comparative and descriptive way. First, the similarity and convergence of Turkey to some selected countries are examined with respect to her macroeconomic position. When taking EMU as a benchmark and comparing the convergence of Turkey with the convergence of some of the countries and country groups, it is found that the macroeconomic deficiencies of Turkey are not in an extent that characterizes Turkey as a totally insufficient candidate for EMU. Next, whether there are similarity and convergence in trade structures of Turkey and the European Union of 15 member states (EU15) for the period between 1995 and 2008 is inspected. The results indicated that Turkish export structure is clearly converging to the export structure of EU15 in the course of time. In general, findings of the thesis indicated that there is mostly a continuous convergence in all of the indicators considered but still Turkey does not meet all of the convergence criteria, perfectly. Therefore, as a result of the examinations, some suggestions have been made which would facilitate EMU membership of Turkey.

<p> </p><p>Buying a house is for most people the biggest investment they will ever make. A lot of factors are taken in to consideration when looking for the perfect house; location, size, what state it is in and so forth. But since most people’s budgets are limited, the price is probably the most important aspect in the decision making process of buying a house. It is therefore highly interesting to note that since 1981, house prices in Sweden have increased with almost 400 percent.</p><p>This thesis examines the relationship between small house prices and macroeconomic factors in the Stockholm region during the period 1991 to 2007. By using macro economic theories complemented by data for all Stockholm’s municipalities in a OLS regression, the thesis will explain how the variables affects the small house prices in a boom, recession and over time.</p><p>The results and analysis reveals that as house prices rises, people tend to increase their spending on interest costs and vice versa if the prices falls. Furthermore, results show that in a boom, an existence of speculation is contributing to the rise while convergence is an important factor in a recession. The most important conclusion from this thesis is the fact that the influence of macroeconomic variables on house prices differs significantly, depending on if the economy is in a recession or a boom. Finally, the influence on the economy that the house- and real estate market possesses cannot be underestimated with its important effect on the credit market, inflation and asset market.</p><p> </p> / <p> </p><p>Husköp är för de flesta människor deras livs största investering och det är därför många faktorer som först måste vägas in varav den viktigaste förmodligen är priset. Huspriserna i Sverige har sedan 1981 nästan fyrdubblats, en utveckling som är mycket kraftigare än inflationen samma tid.</p><p>Den här kandidatuppsatsen avser att undersöka Stockholmregionens småhuspriser åren 1981-2007 och dess relation till makroekonomiska faktorer. Genom att använda en OLS regression med insamlad data för Stockholms alla kommuner och makroekonomiska teorier, visar vi hur utvalda makroekonomiska variabler påverkar småhuspriserna generellt, i hög- samt lågkonjunktur.</p><p>Resultat och analys visar att om småhuspriserna går upp är tenderar Stockholms befolkning att lägga en större del av deras inkomst på räntekostnader och tvärtom när priserna går ner. En psykologisk aspekt har en viktig del i dessa upp och nedgångar, i en uppgång startar en spekulationsperiod då människor vill vara en del ägandet i den uppåtgående husmarknad medans i en nergång skapas en sorts konvergens och en rad faktorer påverkar varandra i en spiralliknande nedåt trend. Denna trend kan förklaras i DiPasquales och Wheatons assets market model där det positiva förhållandet mellan marknader som hyresmarknaden, kreditmarknaden, byggmarknaden och tillgångsmarknaden står i fokus. Den viktigaste slutsatsen i uppsatsen är att makroekonomiska faktorer påverkar småhuspriserna helt olika beroende på om ekonomin är i en hög eller lågkonjunktur. Slutligen bör nämnas hur viktigt hus- och fastighetsmarknaden är för en ekonomi genom dess påverkan på kreditmarknaden och inflationen.</p><p> </p>

This Master’s thesis was commissioned by Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery,subdivision Industrial Gas Turbines (PGI4) in Finspong, Sweden, and in Lincoln, England. The company has been part of Siemens Power Generation Industrial Applications since its acquisition in 2003. In this connection, the strategic importance of procurement became more recognised and the procurement organisation has undergone many changes. Procurement, however, is a function very much affected by changes in the business context,making constant adaptations and transformations necessary. In order to ensure that the procurement organisations in Finspong and Lincoln are well prepared for future challenges, the purchasing director at Siemens PGI4 asked us to investigate competency requirements on procurement beyond the year 2010, based on the impact of macroeconomic trends. Furthermore, a gap analysis was requested in order to compare the current competency level with the required future competency level. The task was approached by studying literature and interviewing well-known purchasing professors. From this we concluded that the macroeconomic trends of greatest relevance for Siemens PGI4 are globalisation, outsourcing, development of information technology, increasing demands on corporate social responsibility and changing consumer patterns. Our investigation of the impact of these trends on procurement resulted in several requirements for the future. For example, risks must be managed throughout the whole supply chain, as the complexity of supply increases as a result of globalisation and outsourcing. The requirements are presented in terms of competencies and roles that need to be assumed. We mapped the current competency level by means of questionnaires filled in by the personnel concerned. We then compared this with the required future level. The gap analysis indicated that gaps within management of relations, for example, exist for several of the studied function profiles and that today’s way of handling risks will not be sufficient in the future. Still, the majority of the competency gaps are not very large. We believe therefore that by taking care of the existing gaps and installing a supply chain risk management team, the procurement function can live up to the future requirements until the year 2010. We recommend the identified crucial roles and competencies to be taken into consideration when recruiting new employees and when developing existing personnel. However, continuous review and update of competencies will be needed in order to keep the company competitive.