Is inflation targeting an appropriate framework for monetary policy? Experience from the inflation-targeting countries countries are optimistic about inflation targeting as a monetary-policy framework. South Africa is also following this trend. The international literature review of the topic offers lessons to be learnt from the common experience of the countries considered. It shows that inflation targeting is not a universal remedy to modern economic ills -- there is an emerging danger of assigning monetary policy a larger role than that which it can perform; a danger of expecting monetary policy to accomplish tasks that it cannot achieve; and a danger of preventing monetary policy from making the contribution that it is capable of doing. Therefore, inflation targeting cannot address all the macroeconomic problems that face many countries, except for inflation. Nonetheless, it plays a crucial role in improving macroeconomic performance. / Economics / M.A. (Economics)

Is inflation targeting an appropriate framework for monetary policy? Experience from the inflation-targeting countries countries are optimistic about inflation targeting as a monetary-policy framework. South Africa is also following this trend. The international literature review of the topic offers lessons to be learnt from the common experience of the countries considered. It shows that inflation targeting is not a universal remedy to modern economic ills -- there is an emerging danger of assigning monetary policy a larger role than that which it can perform; a danger of expecting monetary policy to accomplish tasks that it cannot achieve; and a danger of preventing monetary policy from making the contribution that it is capable of doing. Therefore, inflation targeting cannot address all the macroeconomic problems that face many countries, except for inflation. Nonetheless, it plays a crucial role in improving macroeconomic performance. / Economics / M.A. (Economics)

Cette thèse se propose d’étudier à la lumière des théories traditionnelles et modernes de l’optimalité les facteurs de blocage du processus de convergence au sein de la communauté économique et monétaire d’Afrique centrale. Cette entité régionale voit ses chances de converger à long terme compromises par l’existence d’hétérogénéités au niveau des mécanismes de demande de monnaie d’une part, et de ceux garants de la stabilité des prix d’autre part. Sans renier l’intérêt des critères de convergence nominale, cette étude démontre qu’il serait une erreur de les considérer comme capables de prémunir la zone contre les asymétries. Ces critères, qui sont certes essentiels au fonctionnement de la zone économique et monétaire, offrent de faibles garanties en termes d’ajustement aux chocs asymétriques. En somme, cette thèse s’intéresse aux interconnections entre d’une part les variables nominales et réelles, et les variables structurelles qui les sous-tendent d’autre part. Elle conclut en définitive que l’union régionale formée par la CEMAC ne pourra être viable à terme qu’à condition que les structures tendent à s’homogénéiser. / This thesis proposes to study in the light of the traditional and modern theories of optimality the factors of blocking of the process of convergence within the economic and monetary community of Central Africa. This regional entity sees its chances to converge in the long run compromised by the existence of heterogeneities on the level of the mechanisms of request for currency on the one hand, and those guaranteeing price stability on the other hand. Without disavowing the interest of the convergence criteria nominal, it shows that it would be an error to regard them as able to secure the zone against asymmetries. These criteria, which are certainly essential with the operation of the economic and monetary zone, offer weak warranties in terms of adjustment to the asymmetrical shocks. All in all, this thesis is interested on interconnections between on the one hand the nominal and real variables, and the structural variables which underlie them. It concludes that the regional union formed by the CEMAC could not be viable in the long term, except if the structures tend to be homogenized.

The thesis analyses the change of monetary policy of the European central bank during financial and sovereign debt crisis. Main focus of the thesis is given on the analysis of non-standard measures of monetary policy of the ECB. This thesis explains in detail how the ECB has responded to the various phases of the financial and debt crisis, starting with the period of financial turmoil, continuing with the intensification of the financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis. Finally, the thesis compares these phases and assesses the impact of these non-standard measures.

01 Abstract Foreign exchange reserves are a useful tool and a buffer but maintaining an amount that is too large can be costly to the economy. Recent accumulation of these reserves points to the importance of this topic. This thesis focuses on one specific part of the effect of FX reserves on the economy - the inflation. I use panel data for 74 countries from the year 1996 to the year 2017. There is a certain degree of model uncertainty for which this thesis accounts for by using Bayesian model averaging (BMA) estimation technique. The findings from my model averaging estimations show FX reserves to not be of importance for inflation determination with close to no change when altering lags, variables, when limiting the sample to fixed FX regimes nor when limiting the sample to inflation targeting regimes. The most important variables are estimated to be a central bank financial strength proxy, exchange rate depreciation, money supply, inflation targeting, and capital account openness. These results are robust to lag changes, prior changes, and for the most part remain the same when Pooled OLS is used.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to evaluate what influence has the ECB decision-making on the Eurozone economy and above all to consider the ECB's involvement in solving of the recent financial and persisting European debt crisis. First two chapters represent rather a theoretical part of the thesis, in which the author is dealing generally with the importance and the role of the ECB in the course of the European integration, including its origin, its management structure and internal decision-making process. The second chapter focuses in detail on the ECB's tasks and competencies with emphasise mainly on the monetary policy and on the clarification how a so called transmission mechanism enables the measures adopted within the monetary policy to transform into the real economy. There is also more elaborated the primary task of ECB which is to maintain the price stability. The second part of this thesis is more analytical and reflects current trends and development in the EU banking sector with an accent on the ECB's attitudes. The recent financial crisis is discussed in the third chapter together with the new regulatory rules. Financial crisis tend to have some joint characteristics like e.g. the source of their origin that often lies in an excessive and rapid loan expansion, in leverage increase,...

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:48:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alexandre Guedes Viana.pdf: 572988 bytes, checksum: 4fcd32f1b8649a63030e09f26c448edf (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-05-04 / During the 1930s and 1940s, the Swedish State introduced a set of measures that had as goals reducing the unemployment, raising the economic growth and increasing the welfare. However, this set of measures was blocked by challenges that appeared after the World War II, specially the conflict between inflation and unemployment. To solve this conflict, the economists Gösta Rehn and Rudolf Meidner presented in 1951 an economic model that has been recognized as the synthesis of the Swedish model. This model reveals as an alternative for the economic policy management, therefore it has as objective to reach the full employment and the price stability simultaneously, using labour market policies and a restrictive fiscal policy. These objectives had been reached from the middle of 1950s until the beginning of 1990s, period when Sweden faced a hard economic crisis. One of the crisis consequences was the sharply unemployment rising rates, which raised questions about the validity of the model. Thus, the aim of this paper is to introduce the Swedish model and the full employment issue, analyzing the unemployment rising rates after the 1990s crisis. To reach this aim the theoretical aspects of the Swedish model are discussed, as well as the macroeconomic policies adopted by Sweden after the World War II and the reasons for the unemployment rising rates. This is a worthy issue because the Swedish model was efficient in maintain the full employment for almost four decades / Durante as décadas de 1930 e 1940, o Estado sueco introduziu uma série de medidas que tinham como objetivo reduzir o desemprego, elevar o crescimento econômico e aumentar o bem-estar social. Porém, essas medidas esbarraram em desafios que surgiram após a II Guerra Mundial, destacando o dilema entre inflação e desemprego. Para resolver esse dilema, os economistas Gösta Rehn e Rudolf Meidner apresentaram em 1951 um modelo econômico que passou a ser reconhecido como a síntese do modelo sueco. Esse modelo mostra-se como uma alternativa singular para a gestão da política econômica, pois possui como objetivos atingir o pleno emprego e a estabilidade de preços simultaneamente, utilizando políticas de mercado de trabalho e uma política fiscal restritiva. Esses objetivos foram atingidos de meados da década de 1950 até o início da década de 1990, momento em que a Suécia enfrentou uma forte crise econômica. Um dos reflexos dessa crise foi a expressiva elevação dos índices de desemprego, o que levantou questionamentos sobre a validade do modelo. Desse modo, o propósito deste trabalho é apresentar o modelo sueco e a questão do pleno emprego, além de analisar a elevação do desemprego após a crise da década de 1990. Para atingir este objetivo são discutidos os aspectos teóricos do modelo sueco, as políticas macroeconômicas adotadas pela Suécia após a II Guerra Mundial e as hipóteses para a elevação das taxas de desemprego. Analisar essas hipóteses se mostra relevante, uma vez que o modelo sueco foi eficaz em manter o pleno emprego por praticamente quatro décadas

In this masterwork author presents a concept of the European monetary union, main features and steps of creating this union; also defines benefits and costs of entering the euro zone. The legal regulation of economic convergence requirements and its practice are analyzed comprehensively. In this work author detects harmonization areas of legal acts between European Community and national legal acts, presents a necessity and ways of this harmonization and reviews the most important regulations in Lithuania, witch must be harmonized.

Cette thèse se compose de trois articles sur les politiques budgétaires et monétaires optimales. Dans le premier article, J'étudie la détermination conjointe de la politique budgétaire et monétaire optimale dans un cadre néo-keynésien avec les marchés du travail frictionnels, de la monnaie et avec distortion des taux d'imposition du revenu du travail. Dans le premier article, je trouve que lorsque le pouvoir de négociation des travailleurs est faible, la politique Ramsey-optimale appelle à un taux optimal d'inflation annuel significativement plus élevé, au-delà de 9.5%, qui est aussi très volatile, au-delà de 7.4%. Le gouvernement Ramsey utilise l'inflation pour induire des fluctuations efficaces dans les marchés du travail, malgré le fait que l'évolution des prix est coûteuse et malgré la présence de la fiscalité du travail variant dans le temps. Les résultats quantitatifs montrent clairement que le planificateur s'appuie plus fortement sur l'inflation, pas sur l'impôts, pour lisser les distorsions dans l'économie au cours du cycle économique. En effet, il ya un compromis tout à fait clair entre le taux optimal de l'inflation et sa volatilité et le taux d'impôt sur le revenu optimal et sa variabilité. Le plus faible est le degré de rigidité des prix, le plus élevé sont le taux d'inflation optimal et la volatilité de l'inflation et le plus faible sont le taux d'impôt optimal sur le revenu et la volatilité de l'impôt sur le revenu. Pour dix fois plus petit degré de rigidité des prix, le taux d'inflation optimal et sa volatilité augmentent remarquablement, plus de 58% et 10%, respectivement, et le taux d'impôt optimal sur le revenu et sa volatilité déclinent de façon spectaculaire. Ces résultats sont d'une grande importance étant donné que dans les modèles frictionnels du marché du travail sans politique budgétaire et monnaie, ou dans les Nouveaux cadres keynésien même avec un riche éventail de rigidités réelles et nominales et un minuscule degré de rigidité des prix, la stabilité des prix semble être l'objectif central de la politique monétaire optimale. En l'absence de politique budgétaire et la demande de monnaie, le taux d'inflation optimal tombe très proche de zéro, avec une volatilité environ 97 pour cent moins, compatible avec la littérature. Dans le deuxième article, je montre comment les résultats quantitatifs impliquent que le pouvoir de négociation des travailleurs et les coûts de l'aide sociale de règles monétaires sont liées négativement. Autrement dit, le plus faible est le pouvoir de négociation des travailleurs, le plus grand sont les coûts sociaux des règles de politique monétaire. Toutefois, dans un contraste saisissant par rapport à la littérature, les règles qui régissent à la production et à l'étroitesse du marché du travail entraînent des coûts de bien-être considérablement plus faible que la règle de ciblage de l'inflation. C'est en particulier le cas pour la règle qui répond à l'étroitesse du marché du travail. Les coûts de l'aide sociale aussi baisse remarquablement en augmentant la taille du coefficient de production dans les règles monétaires. Mes résultats indiquent qu'en augmentant le pouvoir de négociation du travailleur au niveau Hosios ou plus, les coûts de l'aide sociale des trois règles monétaires diminuent significativement et la réponse à la production ou à la étroitesse du marché du travail n'entraîne plus une baisse des coûts de bien-être moindre que la règle de ciblage de l'inflation, qui est en ligne avec la littérature existante. Dans le troisième article, je montre d'abord que la règle Friedman dans un modèle monétaire avec une contrainte de type cash-in-advance pour les entreprises n’est pas optimale lorsque le gouvernement pour financer ses dépenses a accès à des taxes à distorsion sur la consommation. Je soutiens donc que, la règle Friedman en présence de ces taxes à distorsion est optimale si nous supposons un modèle avec travaie raw-efficace où seule le travaie raw est soumis à la contrainte de type cash-in-advance et la fonction d'utilité est homothétique dans deux types de main-d'oeuvre et séparable dans la consommation. Lorsque la fonction de production présente des rendements constants à l'échelle, contrairement au modèle des produits de trésorerie de crédit que les prix de ces deux produits sont les mêmes, la règle Friedman est optimal même lorsque les taux de salaire sont différents. Si la fonction de production des rendements d'échelle croissant ou decroissant, pour avoir l'optimalité de la règle Friedman, les taux de salaire doivent être égales. / This dissertation consists of three essays on optimal fiscal and monetary policies. In the first two essays, I consider New Keynesian frameworks with frictional labor markets, money and distortionary income tax rates. In the first one, I study the joint determination of optimal fiscal and monetary policy and the role of worker's bargaining power on this determination. In the second one, I study the effects of worker’s bargaining power on the welfare costs of three monetary policy rules, which are: inflation targeting and simple monetary rules that respond to output and labor market tightness, with and without interest-rate smoothing. In the third essay, I study the optimality of the Friedman rule in monetary economies where demand for money is motivated by firms, originated in a cash-in-advance constraint. In the first essay, I find that when the worker’s bargaining power is low, the Ramsey-optimal policy calls for a significantly high optimal annual rate of inflation, in excess of 9.5%, that is also highly volatile, in excess of 7.4%. The Ramsey government uses inflation to induce efficient fluctuations in labor markets, despite the fact that changing prices is costly and despite the presence of time-varying labor taxes. The quantitative results clearly show that the planner relies more heavily on inflation, not taxes, in smoothing distortions in the economy over the business cycle. Indeed, there is a quite clear trade-off between the optimal inflation rate and its volatility and the optimal income tax rate and its variability. The smaller is the degree of price stickiness, the higher are the optimal inflation rate and inflation volatility and the lower are the optimal income tax rate and income tax volatility. For a ten times smaller degree of price stickiness, the optimal rate of inflation and its volatility rise remarkably, over 58% and 10%, respectively, and the optimal income tax rate and its volatility decline dramatically. These results are significant given that in the frictional labor market models without fiscal policy and money, or in the Walrasian-based New Keynesian frameworks with even a rich array of real and nominal rigidities and for even a miniscule degree of price stickiness, price stability appears to be the central goal of optimal monetary policy. Absent fiscal policy and money demand frictions, optimal rate of inflation falls to very near zero, with a volatility about 97 percent lesser, consistent with the literature. In the second essay, I show how the quantitative results imply that worker's bargaining weight and welfare costs of monetary rules are related negatively. That is, the lower the bargaining power of workers, the larger the welfare losses of monetary rules. However, in a sharp contrast to the literature, the rules that respond to output and labor market tightness feature considerably lower welfare costs than the inflation targeting rule. This is specifically the case for the rule that responds to labor market tightness. The welfare costs also remarkably decline by increasing the size of the output coefficient in the monetary rules. My findings indicate that by raising the worker's bargaining power to the Hosios level and higher, welfare losses of the three monetary rules drop significantly and response to output or market tightness does not, anymore, imply lower welfare costs than the inflation targeting rule, which is in line with the existing literature. In the third essay, I first show that the Friedman rule in a monetary model with a cash-in-advance constraint for firms is not optimal when the government to finance its expenditures has access to distortionary taxes on consumption. I then argue that, the Friedman rule in the presence of these distorting taxes is optimal if we assume a model with raw-efficient labors where only the raw labor is subject to the cash-in-advance constraint and the utility function is homothetic in two types of labor and separable in consumption. Once the production function exhibits constant-returns-to-scale, unlike the cash-credit goods model that the prices of both goods are the same, the Friedman is optimal even when wage rates are different. If the production function has decreasing or increasing-returns-to-scale, then to have the optimality of the Friedman rule, wage rates should be equal.

La banque centrale européenne (bce) n'est pas une institution au sens des traités communautaires. pourtant elle dispose, à l'image des institutions, de pouvoirs législatifs et exécutifs. au sens du droit communautaire, la bce est un <<organe>>, elle jouit donc de la personnalité juridique. dans le paysage institutionnel de l'union, la bce est la seule à disposer à la fois de pouvoirs législatifs et exécutifs et de la personnalité morale. il convient de ce fait de se poser la question de la place de la bce dans ce paysage institutionnel. de plus, les pouvoirs de la bce et leur exercice sont extrêmement flous. tout d'abord, la bce partage certains pouvoirs avec le conseil ecofin, qui lui mêne en partage avec l'eurogroupe. ensuite, les pouvoirs de la bce sont exercés soit par le conseil des gouverneurs, soit par le directoire. les décisions prises par ces organes, sont ensuite mises en oeuvre par la bce elle même ou par les banques centrales nationales. il se pose donc la question des réels pouvoirs de la bce, du fait de son intégration au sein du système européen de banques centrales. beaucoup d'auteurs ont apporté des réponses à ces questions, la bce : banque centrale de la communauté, la bce autorité administrative indépedante, le bce communauté internationale à part. malgré, l'intérêt de ces travaux aucun n'a pris en compte la bce dans sa globalité et dans sa complexité. notre travail de tèse se propose de reprendre l'ensemble des questions relatives à la place de la bce dans les institutions et organes de l'union, afin de mieux définir et comprendre cet organe à part. / The Eurosystem is a unique structure of European Union law which includes the central banks of States that have adopted the euro and the European Central Bank. A theoretical study of the evolution of the exercise of power within the Union demonstrates the emergence of a new methode of integration called "vertical integration." In a dialectical process between theory and reality of the Eurosystem, the main features of the the vertical integration method can be tested and its main qualities and defects disclosed.The method of vertical integration led to the construction of sub-systems composed of national bodies and body of the Union. The method operates in four directions. The sub- system thereby producted relates formally and functionally to the EU and operates in a specific sector which imposes the specificities of its action. It can be said "organized" (its components are interconnected by complex interrelationships guaranteeing the unity and effectiveness of the system). It is independent from the states as it is from the political institutions of the Union.The study of the Eurosystem through this perspective allows to elucidate the nature of this unusual construction whose action in crises - the financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis - was crucial. Such research can also highlight, under a new perspective, the recent developments in the institutional system of the EU as a whole.