This thesis provides four contributions to the literature on the productivity- internationalization nexus by considering some recent developments in the literature. A well-established stylized fact is reported by this literature, which is that exporters are more productive and larger than non-exporters, and two hypotheses attempt to explain this finding. The first, often referred to as the self-selection hypothesis, suggests that more productive firms select themselves into export markets, while the learning-by-exporting hypothesis highlights the role of learning from exporting. In this thesis, first, the self-selection hypothesis is revisited, and it is shown that evidence against self-selection exists in some UK industries. Second, it is demon- strated that some UK firms experience rising marginal costs, although both tra- ditional and new trade theories assume constant marginal cost. It is then shown that the evidence against self-selection that we report can be best explained by the existence of increasing, rather than constant, marginal costs. Third, the learning by exporting hypothesis is tested empirically for UK firms. Highlighting the importance of the scale effect in total factor productivity growth, it is shown that any learning by exporting effects are predominantly attributable to a change in scale efficiency. Unlike Melitz (2003), some recent studies consider some other strategies to access foreign markets, such as foreign direct investment, and cross-border mergers. Finally, following this new branch of the literature, the productivity-internationalization nexus is examined by utilizing a two-country oligopolistic model. It is shown that more productive firm might prefer greenfield investment over cross-border merger, which contradicts the findings provided by the relevant literature.

El objetivo del trabajo es evaluar el efecto del capital social sobre la pobreza dependiendo de las distintas definiciones de pobreza utilizadas, el tipo de lazo social empleado para aproximar la noción de capital social (fuerte o débil), y ciertas variables de interacción entre capital social y capital humano. Usando datos de panel corto para el Gran Buenos Aires (desde octubre de 2000 hasta mayo de 2002), y controlando por el efecto de ciertas variables regionales, temporales, familiares e individuales, encontramos que los lazos débiles casi nunca son significativos. Por el contrario, parecería existir un efecto umbral sobre la pobreza en el caso de los lazos fuertes. Debido a este efecto asimétrico, sólo los hogares que poseen un alto nivel educativo presentan una relación negativa entre esta variable y la probabilidad de caer en la pobreza. En consecuencia, mientras es apropiada como estrategia de subsistencia, la acumulación de capital social no parece ser un instrumento efectivo para aumentar la movilidad económica ascendente. / The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of social capital on poverty outcomes depending on alternative poverty definitions, whether strong or weak ties are used as proxy indicators for social capital, and the kind of interaction variables between social capital and human capital. Using a short panel of household for the Great Buenos Aires (from october 2000 to may 2002), and controlling for regional, temporal, family and individual variables, we find that weak ties are almost never significant. On the contrary, a threshold effect on poverty is found for strong ties. Because of this asymmetric effect, only highly educated people enjoy from a negative relation between this variable and the likelihood of poverty. Therefore, while appropriated for subsistence strategies, social capital accumulation does not appear to be a useful mechanism to increase upward income mobility.

No description available.

Στόχος της παρούσης διπλωματικής εργασίας είναι να μελετηθεί η Ταχεία Διάχυση Αρνητικών Χρηματοοικονομικών Συμβάντων (financial contagion) όπως αυτή παρουσιάζεται στην βιβλιογραφία καθώς επίσης οι αιτίες, οι τρόποι διάχυσης και οι τρόποι μέτρησης της. Όσον αφορά στο εφαρμοσμένο κομμάτι της υπάρχουσας βιβλιογραφίας εξετάζεται το μέρος αυτής το οποίο αφορά στην εξέταση της Ταχείας Διάχυσης Αρνητικών Χρηματοοικονομικών Συμβάντων με μοντέλα περιορισμένης εξαρτημένης μεταβλητής. Γίνεται εκτενέστερη ανάλυση στο multinomial logit μοντέλο το οποίο φανερώνει την πιθανότητα εμφάνισης ενός ενδεχομένου σε σχέση με τις επεξηγηματικές μεταβλητές που επιλέγονται. Στα πλαίσια της εργασίας αυτής γίνεται και μια εμπειρική εφαρμογή ενός τέτοιου μοντέλου με δεδομένα που αφορούν την Ελληνική Χρηματιστηριακή Αγορά με σκοπό να δειχθεί αν οι χαμηλές αποδόσεις ορισμένων υποδεικτών του Γενικού Δείκτη Τιμών επηρεάζουν την πιθανότητα εμφάνισης ταυτόχρονων κοινών υπερβάσεων στις αποδόσεις (coexceedances) και άλλων υποδεικτών. / The aim of this thesis is to study the rapid dissemination Negative Financial Events (financial contagion) as presented in the literature as well as the causes, ways and methods of diffusion measurement. As far as the applied part of the existing literature is concerned, it is examined the part which concerns the examination of the Rapid Diffusion of Negative Financial Events (financial contagion) with limited dependent variable models. There is extensive analysis of the multinomial logit model. As part of this work it is presented an empirical application of such a model with data from the Greek stock market in order to indicate whether the low returns of certain subindices of the General Price Index affect the likelihood of simultaneous joint excesses in returns (coexceedances) of other subindices .

Connus sous le nom de Systèmes d’Alerte Avancés, ou Early Warning Systems (EWS), les modèles de prévision des crises financières sont appelés à jouer un rôle déterminant dans l’orientation des politiques économiques tant au niveau microéconomique qu’au niveau macroéconomique et international. Or,dans le sillage de la crise financière mondiale, des questions majeures se posent sur leur réelle capacité prédictive. Deux principales problématiques émergent dans le cadre de cette littérature : comment évaluer les capacités prédictives des EWS et comment les améliorer ?Cette thèse d’économétrie appliquée vise à proposer (i) une méthode d’évaluation systématique des capacités prédictives des EWS et (ii) de nouvelles spécifications d’EWS visant à améliorer leurs performances. Ce travail comporte quatre chapitres. Le premier propose un test original d’évaluation des prévisions par intervalles de confiance fondé sur l’hypothèse de distribution binomiale du processus de violations. Le deuxième chapitre propose une stratégie d’évaluation économétrique des capacités prédictives des EWS. Nous montrons que cette évaluation doit être fondée sur la détermination d’un seuil optimal sur les probabilités prévues d’apparition des crises ainsi que sur la comparaison des modèles.Le troisième chapitre révèle que la dynamique des crises (la persistance) est un élément essentiel de la spécification économétrique des EWS. Les résultats montrent en particulier que les modèles de type logit dynamiques présentent de bien meilleurs capacités prédictives que les modèles statiques et que les modèles de type Markoviens. Enfin, dans le quatrième chapitre nous proposons un modèle original de type probit dynamique multivarié qui permet d’analyser les schémas de causalité intervenant entre différents types crises (bancaires, de change et de dette). L’illustration empirique montre clairement que le passage à une modélisation trivariée améliore sensiblement les prévisions pour les pays qui connaissent les trois types de crises. / Known as Early Warning Systems (EWS), financial crises forecasting models play a key role in definingeconomic policies at microeconomic, macroeconomic and international level. However, in the wake ofthe global financial crisis, numerous questions with respect to their forecasting abilities have been raised,as very few signals were drawn prior to the starting of the turmoil. Two questions arise in this context:how to evaluate EWS forecasting abilities and how to improve them?The broad goal of this applied econometrics dissertation is hence (i) to propose a systematic model-free evaluation methodology for the forecasting abilities of EWS as well as (ii) to introduce new EWSspecifications with improved out-of-sample performance. This work has been concretized in four chapters.The first chapter introduces a new approach to evaluate interval forecasts which relies on the binomialdistributional assumption of the violations series. The second chapter proposes an econometric evaluationmethodology of the forecasting abilities of an EWS. We show that adequate evaluation must take intoaccount the cut-off both in the optimal crisis forecast step and in the model comparison step. The thirdchapter points out that crisis dynamics (persistence) is essential for the econometric specification of anEWS. Indeed, dynamic logit models lead to better out-of-sample forecasting probabilities than those oftheir main competitors (static model and Markov-switching one). Finally, a multivariate dynamic probitEWS is proposed in the fourth chapter to take into account the causality between different types of crises(banking, currency, sovereign debt). The empirical application shows that the trivariate model improvesforecasts for countries that underwent the three types of crises.

La presente tesi raggruppa tre contributi che analizzano la partecipazione dei minori ad attività lavorative e scolastiche in Marocco, le variabili correlate con il benessere individuale e le differenze nei livelli salariali in Albania. I tre saggi tentano di fornire analisi empiriche basate sulla letteratura più recente e di contribuire allo sviluppo della metodologia quantitativa più comunemente utilizzata. / The present thesis is a collection of three contributions which investigate children’s schooling and labour participation in Morocco, the correlates of subjective well being and the differences in wage levels in Albania. The papers try to carry out empirical analyses of these issues based on the most recent developments in the relevant literature and to contribute to the empirical methodology commonly used.

This diploma thesis is focused on the analysis of small samples where it is not possible to obtain more data. It can be especially due to the capital intensity or time demandingness. Where the production have not a wherewithall for the realization more data or absence of the financial resources. Of course, analysis of small samples is very uncertain, because inferences are always encumbered with the level of uncertainty.