Cette thèse contribue au débat sur les politiques de ciblage d’inflation et de transparence des banques centrales en présentant notamment trois essais théoriques et empiriques sur le sujet. Dans le premier essai, nous étudions théoriquement les conditions sous lesquelles il serait optimal pour une banque centrale d’adopter explicitement un régime de ciblage d’inflation. Nous proposons un nouveau cadre théorique qui combine les deux principales raisons avancées dans la littérature pour expliquer les effets réels à court terme de la politique monétaire et qui sont d’une part, la présence d’informations hétérogènes entre les agents économiques (Phelps, 1970 ; Lucas, 1972), et d’autre part, la rigidité des salaires ou des prix (Taylor, 1980 ; Calvo, 1983). Nous analysons ensuite notre problématique dans ce nouveau cadre en considérant l’interaction entre le degré de rigidité des prix, et le degré de complémentarités stratégiques dans la fixation de prix des firmes. Nos résultats montrent que l’adoption d’un régime de ciblage d’inflation dépend fortement de l’importance relative des paramètres du modèle. En particulier, nous montrons que le ciblage d’inflation devrait être toujours adopté lorsque les complémentarités stratégiques sont faibles, alors que dans le cas contraire, il est optimal uniquement lorsque les prix sont assez rigides et que la banque centrale détient des informations suffisamment précises sur les fondamentaux de l’économie. Dans le second essai, nous utilisons la macroéconomie expérimentale afin d’évaluer dans quelle mesure l’annonce de la cible d’inflation est pertinente dans un cadre de ciblage de l’inflation. Nos résultats montrent que lorsque la banque centrale ne se soucie que de la stabilisation de l’inflation, l’annonce de la cible d’inflation n’apporte pas de gain supplémentaire en termes de performances macro-économiques, par rapport à une politique monétaire active (type règle de Taylor). Cependant, si la banque centrale intègre également la stabilisation de l’activité économique dans ses objectifs, la communication de la cible contribue à réduire la volatilité de l’inflation, du taux d’intérêt, et de l’écart de production, bien que leurs niveaux moyens ne soient pas affectés. Ce résultat fournit ainsi une justification pour l’adoption d’un régime de ciblage flexible d’inflation par la majorité des pays ciblant l’inflation. Enfin dans le troisième essai, nous appliquons une analyse transversale ainsi que la technique des variables instrumentales, afin d’analyser les effets de la transparence des banques centrales sur les résultats macroéconomiques dans les pays émergents. Nous construisons un nouvel indice de transparence qui combine certains aspects de l’indice de transparence globale d’Eijffinger et Geraats (2006), avec ceux de l’indice de transparence sur le comité de politique monétaire de Hayo et Mazhar (2011). Nous analysons ensuite le rôle individuel de chaque composante du nouvel indice en termes de réduction du niveau de l’inflation et de sa volatilité, ainsi que de la volatilité du produit. Contrairement à la littérature antérieure, nous trouvons que le nouvel indice de transparence ainsi que ses aspects économique, politique, procédurale et de transparence sur la politique monétaire impactent négativement le niveau moyen de l’inflation, mais pas sa volatilité dans ces pays. L’unique composante du nouvel indice qui permet de réduire à la fois la volatilité de l’inflation et celle de la production est la transparence opérationnelle. Ces résultats s’avèrent robustes aux différentes spécifications de modèles économétriques utilisés dans cet essai. / This dissertation contributes to the debate on inflation targeting and central bantransparency by presenting three theoretical and empirical essays on the topic. In the first essay, we theoretically investigate the conditions under which it would be optimal for a central bank to explicitly adopt an inflation targeting regime. We propose a new theoretical framework that combines the two main frictions put forward in the literature to explain the real short run effects of monetary policy that is, heterogeneous information among agents (Phelps, 1970; Lucas, 1972), and wage or price rigidities (Taylor, 1980; Calvo, 1983). We then analyze our issue in this new framework by considering the interaction between the degree of price stickiness, and the degree of strategic complementarities in firms’ price setting. Our results show that adopting an inflation targeting regime crucially depends on the relative importance of the model’s parameters. In particular, we show that inflation targeting should always be adopted when strategic complementarities are low, while in the opposite case, it is optimal only if prices are sticky enough and the central bank holds sufficiently accurate information on the fundamentals of the economy. In the second essay, we use experimental macroeconomics to evaluate to what extent communication of the inflation target is relevant in an inflation targeting framework. Our results show that first, when the central bank only cares about inflation stabilization, announcing the inflation target does not make a difference in terms of macroeconomic performance compared to a standard active monetary policy. However, if the central bank also cares about the stabilization of the economic activity, communicating the target helps to reduce the volatility of inflation, interest rate, and output gap although their average levels are not affected. This finding provides a rationale for the adoption of flexible inflation targeting by the majority of inflation targeting countries. In the third essay, using a cross-sectional analysis and instrumental variables technique, we analyze the impact of central bank transparency on macroeconomic outcomes in emerging economies. We build a new index of transparency that combines some aspects of the overall Eijffinger and Geraats (2006) transparency index, with those of monetary policy committee transparency developed in Hayo and Mazhar (2011). We then analyze the individual role of each component of the new index in mitigating inflation and its volatility, as well as output volatility. By contrast to the previous literature, we interestingly find that the overall new index of transparency as well as its political, economic, procedural, and policy aspects negatively impact the average level of inflation, but not its volatility in these countries. The unique component of the new index that reduces the volatility of both inflation and output is operational transparency, and these results are robust to different econometric and instruments setting specifications.

The thesis processes the auditor’s role and whether it can constrain possible earnings management in smaller Swedish private corporates. The removed auditing obligation that was abolished in Sweden 2010 with the reason to reduce the administrative burden faced by smaller corporates, contributed to an important discussion regarding the auditor’s actual importance. In addition, the corporate tax in Sweden was significantly reduced from 26.3 percent to 22 percent, which gave Swedish corporates incentives to reduce their earnings before the tax reduction, and therefore pay less taxes. This phenomenon is used in the thesis as an excellent opportunity to measure earnings management since there were significantly strong incentives for corporates to manipulate their earnings at that time. The thesis aims to increase understanding among these corporates accounting, and whether the auditor can strengthen the accounting- and audit quality, and therefore constrain earnings management. Through the use of a quantitative method where statistical tests have been performed on underlying data gathered from the corporates annual reports, the thesis research question has been answered. The formulation of the research questions is “Does the degree of earnings management differ between audited and unaudited corporates?”, which has been investigated by measuring the degree of earnings management through unexpected accruals, but also through SG&A cost stickiness. Furthermore, the thesis aims to provide the research area with arguments regarding the appropriateness of the audit exemption. The result obtained in the thesis indicates that audited corporates have less negative unexpected accruals, and hence a minor degree of earnings management in comparison with unaudited corporates. However, no significance is shown in the result, at a five percent significance level, which means that it’s not possible to say with certainty that there’s a difference between these two groups in terms of negative unexpected accruals. Instead, there is evidence that there’s a significant difference between audited and unaudited corporates in terms of cost stickiness, where unaudited corporates showed more cost stickiness and thus also a higher degree of earnings management. With an additional test the thesis also demonstrates that there are corporates that don’t follow the Swedish laws regarding audit exemption. This is when it’s discovered that there are corporates that aren’t covered by the audit exemption, and thus don’t meet the required limits, but still don’t provide an auditor. These corporates also prove to have a higher degree of earnings management since the thesis received a significant result in terms of negative unexpected accruals. To sum up, the thesis highlights that the auditor’s role is of great importance in several aspects, and for this reason there are motives for legislators to review the audit exemption in Sweden.

Submitted by Joao Luiz Ayres Queiroz da Silva (jluizayres@gmail.com) on 2012-01-13T03:10:40Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseDoutorado_JoaoAyres_VersaoFinal_Eletronica.pdf: 529477 bytes, checksum: d6770f4fc6e8a2ced7e469151b866323 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Andrea Virginio Machado (andrea.machado@fgv.br) on 2012-02-17T16:50:02Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseDoutorado_JoaoAyres_VersaoFinal_Eletronica.pdf: 529477 bytes, checksum: d6770f4fc6e8a2ced7e469151b866323 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-02-28T12:07:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseDoutorado_JoaoAyres_VersaoFinal_Eletronica.pdf: 529477 bytes, checksum: d6770f4fc6e8a2ced7e469151b866323 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-07-26 / Esta tese tem como objetivo principal aproximar a evidencia empirica existente sobre os agregados macroeconomicos com as novas evidencias empiricas baseadas nos micro dados de precos ao consumidor, tendo como base os modelos padroes de rigidez de preco utilizados na literatura de politica monetaria. Para isso, esta tese utiliza a base de dados individuais de precos ao consumidor no Brasil fornecida pela Fundacao Getulio Vargas. Especificamente, esta tese foca em tres temas principais: a existencia de variac˜oes temporararias de precos, a heterogeneidade na rigidez de precos entre firmas de um mesmo setor e o formato das func˜oes hazard. Os resultados mostram que: existe de fato uma correlac˜ao entre as variaveis referentes as mudancas temporararias de precos e os agregados macroeconomicos; a heterogeneidade na rigidez de precos entre firmas de um mesmo setor apresenta efeitos significativos sobre a dinamica dos agregados macroeconomicos; e por fim, o formato mais geral da func˜ao hazard proposta nesta tese possibilita novas dinamicas dos agregados macroeconomicos. / This thesis has as its main goal to approximate the existing empirical evidence on macroeconomic aggregates with the new empirical evidences based on micro data on consumer prices, having as a baseline the standard sticky-price models used in the literature on monetary policy. In order to do that, this thesis makes use of a micro data on individual consumer prices in Brazil published by Getulio Vargas Foundation. Specifically, this thesis focus on three main issues: the existence of temporary price changes, the within-sector heterogeneity in price stickiness and the shape of hazard functions. The results show that: there exist a correlation between variables on temporary price changes and macroeconomic aggregates; the within-sector heterogeneity in price stickiness has significant effects on macroeconomic dynamics; and the more general specification of the shape of the hazard function that is proposed in this thesis leads to new dynamics for the macroeconomic aggregates.

Humour has for a long time been regarded as something unproblematic that in general shouldn’t be taken seriously, and humour research has mainly focused its positive functions and effects. However, humour is indeed a social and discursive practise that, just like others, have social implications. The aim of this essay is, informed by an intersectional perspective, to problematize and critically examine stand-up comedy as discursive practise and to make visible how humour build upon dominating discourses in society. The aim is also to examine the self-contradictory dimension of the jokes. In a critical discourse analysis of Özz Nûjen’s show Dålig stämning (2013), using PC (political correctness) as an overall analytical framework, the analytical categories ‘women’ as well as ‘ethnicity and culture’ are focused. My conclusion is that in all cases of Nûjen’s prerogative of interpretation, ‘stupidity’, as the lowest common denominator, sticks to symbols, bodies and phenomenon that are associated with something deviant or negative. By what is not expressed, a white, normative Swedish PC-identity is constructed as the abstract, preferable subject. Nûjen’s stand-up comedy, i.a. in expressions of self-contradiction, proves to mainly reinforce social norms. Consequently, negative preconceptions and biased representations of reality are cemented. Though Nûjen does contribute to sociocultural change to some extent, the elaborations of the jokes in most cases prove to sustain the social order. A renegotiation of identities is therefore made strictly limited. However, in one case, Nûjen does challenge the notion of identities as fixed and essential, when renegotiating the master status and construction of “The ethnical Other woman”.