This dissertation is entitled "Essays in the International Economics of Credit and Banking". It comprises three essays. The first essay develops an empirical model of international credit with moral hazard and the risk of repudiation to examine (i) the determinants of the intertemporal and cross-national variations in credit ceilings and (ii) the channels through which output attracts foreign credit. It reports that productivity is the most important variable in attracting credit, followed by education, and then physical capital. Furthermore, international trade, country financial risk ratings, and geography explain more than 60% of the cross-national variations in credit ceiling. Therefore, international relations and investment in education and productivity-enhancing institutions are crucial in attracting foreign credit. / The second essay develops open-economy variants of the old Friedman-Schwartz and the new Lucas-Sargent-Wallace monetarist models to investigate the puzzle of monetary neutrality. The essay further introduces financial aggregation theories into the models. It studies the theoretical and business-cycle relationships between real output and financial aggregates, interest rates, exchange rate, and prices using Canadian quarterly data for the period 1959: 1 to 2002: 1. It reports that the open-economy variants of the monetarist models with aggregation-theoretic financial aggregates perform the best in producing significant sign patterns that are predicted by theory. Furthermore, Monte Carlo experiments show that large percentage of real output variance is explained by shocks to aggregation-theoretic financial aggregates relative to other variables. Thus, there is no difference between the effects of anticipated and unanticipated monetary shocks. / The third essay examines the appropriate formulation of the monetary aggregate for the Nigerian economy for the period 1970:1-2000:4 for the determination of real output. This examination covers simple sum, variable elasticity of substitution (ves), and divisia (dv) aggregation over currency, demand deposits, and savings deposits. The user cost of liquid assets is employed in the construction of both the dv and the yes aggregates. Using maximum likelihood estimation technique, the essay reports that, for the Nigerian economy, currency does as well as or better than any narrow- or broad-money measure in explaining industrial production. Further, the simple sum m1 and m2 outperformed both the yes and dv aggregates. Therefore, monetary policy in Nigeria should focus on the supply of currency and/or of narrow money, rather than on broad money or the divisia aggregates.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.115643 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Gebregiorgis, Bekele Sinkie. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Economics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002837734, proquestno: AAINR66675, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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