Luận văn - Luận án nước ngoài
Permanent URI for this collection
Lưu ý: Để đọc trực tuyến hoặc tải về "Luận văn/ Luận án", quý Thầy Cô và các bạn Sinh viên vui lòng ĐĂNG NHẬP vào hệ thống bằng tài khoản mail HOA SEN. Nếu là lần đăng nhập đầu tiên vui lòng đợi 5-10 phút (trong giờ hành chính) để Thư viện kích hoạt tài khoản, sau đó bấm F5 hoặc tiến hành đăng nhập lại để tiếp tục truy cập. Có thể xem Hướng dẫn tìm kiếm tài liệu trên Thư viện số Tại đây.
TRUNG TÂM THÔNG TIN - THƯ VIỆN XIN CẢM ƠN VÀ KÍNH CHÚC QUÝ THẦY CÔ VÀ CÁC BẠN SINH VIÊN NHIỀU SỨC KHỎE VÀ THÀNH CÔNG!Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Essays on dynamic macroeconomics([Stellenbosch University], 2014) Steinbach, Max Rudibert; Smit, B. W.; Du Plessis, S. A.In the first essay of this thesis, a medium scale DSGE model is developed and estimated for the South African economy. When used for forecasting, the model is found to outperform private sector economists when forecasting CPI inflation, GDP growth and the policy rate over certain horizons. In the second essay, the benchmark DSGE model is extended to include the yield on South African 10-year government bonds. The model is then used to decompose the 10-year yield spread into (1) the structural shocks that contributed to its evolution during the inflation targeting regime of the South African Reserve Bank, as well as (2) an expected yield and a term premium. In addition, it is found that changes in the South African term premium may predict future real economic activity. Finally, the need for DSGE models to take account of financial frictions became apparent during the recent global financial crisis. As a result, the final essay incorporates a stylised banking sector into the benchmark DSGE model described above. The optimal response of the South African Reserve Bank to financial shocks is then analysed within the context of this structural model.Item Education and country growth models([Stellenbosch University], 2014) Gustafsson, Martin Anders; Van der Berg, ServaasThe over-arching concern of the three parts of the dissertation is how economics can and should influence education policymaking, the emphasis on the economics side being models of country development and the contribution made by human capital. Part I begins with a review of economic growth theory. How educational performance and country development have been measured is then discussed, with considerable attention going towards conceptual and measurement complexities associated with the latter. An approach is presented for expanding the number of countries whose educational quality can be compared, by expanding the number of linkable testing programmes. This approach, which above all allows for the inclusion of more African and Latin American countries, is one of the key contributions made by the dissertation to the existing body of knowledge. Three existing empirical growth models are examined, including work by Hanushek and Woessman on the relationship between educational quality and income. Part I ends with a discussion on how the economics literature can best be packaged to influence education policymaking. A ‘growth simulator’ tool in Excel for informing the policy discourse is presented. The production of this tool includes establishing empirically a feasible improvement trajectory for educational quality that policymakers can use and some analysis of how linguistic fractionalisation in a country evolves over time. This tool can be considered a further key output of the dissertation. A basic model for relating educational quality, via income growth, to teacher pay, is presented. Part II offers an analysis of UNESCO country-level data on enrolment and spending going back to 1970, with a view to establishing historical patterns that can inform education planners, particularly those in developing countries, on how budgets and enrolment expansion should be distributed across the levels of the education system. The analysis presented in Part II represents a novel way of using existing countrylevel data and can be seen as an important step towards filling a gap experienced by education policymakers, namely the paucity of empirical evidence that can guide decisions around the prioritisation of education levels. Part II moreover arrives at a few empirical findings, including the finding that enrolment and spending patterns have been systematically different in countries with faster economic growth and the finding that historical per student spending at the secondary level appears to play a larger role in development than was previously thought. Part III contrasts the available economic advice for education policymakers with what policymakers actually appear to believe in. The focus falls, in particular, on four developing countries: South Africa, Brazil, Chile and China. A few areas where economists could explore the data to a greater degree or communicate available findings differently, in the interests of better education policies, are identified. Part III partly serves as a demonstration of how comparisons between education systems can be better oriented towards providing advice to education policymakers on questions relating to efficiency and equity.Item Essays on local determinants of economic growth([Boston College], 2016) Petkov, Ivan; Schiantarelli, FabioThe fundamental concept unifying this thesis is that outcomes at small geographical units can shed light on key economic questions of interest for both macroeconomics and finance. Some of the questions I explore in my work include whether bank networks facilitate access to financial capital by small businesses in the US, whether lending to small businesses is important for short-term economic growth, and whether different cultural and institutional endowments improve economic outcomes in the long run.\\ Small Business Lending and the Bank-Branch Network: In this chapter, I examine the role of banks in propagating local economic shocks from one area to another through their network of bank branches, by exploiting a newly developed branch-level dataset. Specifically, I examine the change in the geographical distribution of small business loans within each bank network in response to: 1) increases in deposit growth due to presence in areas with new fracking wells; 2) changes in the profitability of real estate loans due to presence in areas experiencing real estate booms. I evaluate how the supply-driven changes in lending following these shocks impact real economic activity. I find that banks export the increase in liquidity from the fracking areas and fund more small business loans at other, more distant branches. Borrowers from banks with a higher exposure to fracking experience faster establishment growth at areas beyond 100 miles from the fracking activity. The results for the real estate booms show that increases in the return of real estate loans contributed to a decrease in small business lending at branches away these booms. Borrowers from banks with high exposure to residential appreciation experienced slower establishment growth even within areas at a significant distance from the real estate booms.\\ Does It Matter Where You Came From? Ancestry Composition and Economic Performance of US Counties, 1850 - 2010: The United States provides a unique laboratory for understanding how the cultural, institutional, and human capital endowments of immigrant groups shape economic outcomes. In this paper, we use census micro-samples to reconstruct the country-of-ancestry composition of the population of US counties from 1850 to 2010. We also develop a county-level measure of GDP per capita over the same period. Using this novel panel data set, we show that the evolution of the country-of-origin composition of a county is significantly associated with changes in county-level GDP. The cultural, institutional, and human capital endowments from the country of origin drive this association. Particularly important are attitudes towards cooperation with others. Using an instrumental variable strategy, we identify a significant effect of changes in the ancestry-weighted endowments on economic development. Finally, our results suggest that while the fractionalization of ancestry groups is positively related to county GDP, fractionalization in attributes such as trust is negatively related to local economic performance. \\ Culture: Persistence and Evolution: This paper presents evidence on the speed of evolution (or lack thereof) of a wide range of values and beliefs of different generations of European immigrants to the US and interprets the evidence in the light of a simple model of socialization and identity choice. The main result is that persistence differs greatly across cultural attitudes. For instance, many family values, political orientation, and most deep personal religious values converge slowly to the prevailing US norm. Others, such as attitudes toward cooperation, children's independence, and sexual matters, converge rather quickly. The results obtained studying higher generation immigrants differ greatly from those found when the analysis is limited to the second generation, as typically done in the literature, and they imply a lesser degree of persistence than previously thought. Finally, we show that persistence is ``culture specific'' in the sense that the country from which one's ancestors came matters for the pattern of generational convergence.Item Three essays on investment([University of Michigan], 2015) Mocanu, Ana-MariaThis dissertation studies the supply and demand of capital goods, and the effects of investment tax incentives. Chapter II examines the effects of investment tax incentives. The evidence indicates that subsidies increase capital goods purchases more than domestic production so investment subsidies also stimulate foreign capital goods producers. At capital producing firms, measures of economic increase substantially following an investment tax subsidy. The data is used to estimate the key parameters of a multi-sector, open-economy DSGE model with capita and labor adjustment costs. In the estimated model, investment tax incentives are strong enough to cause noticeable changes in aggregate economic activity. The import supply elasticity is considerable, allowing investment to rise even in the short-run in response to investment subsidies. Chapter III develops an equilibrium model of investment with retiming costs at the micro-level. In the benchmark case in which investment retiming costs are zero, this model and standard fixed-costs models generate virtually identical aggregate predictions. If the timing adjustment costs are positive, then capital goods prices may exhibit predictable changes over time. Simulated impulse responses in the quantitative model are then used to analyze the effects of retiming costs on the effectiveness of investment of tax subsidies, the economy’s reaction to transitory investment supply shocks, and an out-of-steady state distribution of capital vintages. In the presence of retiming costs, temporary subsidies are less effective and cause a fall in investment after they expire. Additionally, investment supply shocks have an attenuated effect of investment relative to the benchmark case. Chapter IV studies the supply of capital goods. The data indicate that for equipment, the elasticity of investment supply is considerable, while for structures the elasticity of investment supply is close to unity. After calibrating the elasticity of investment supply, investment supply shocks are recovered for each capital type. Using a mix of reduced-form and structural time-series techniques, the structural parameters of the permanent and transitory components for each series are estimated from the data. The analysis suggests that permanent shocks are more prominent than transitory shocks and that the permanent and transitory components are strongly negatively correlated.Item Essays in macro and labor economics([University of Minnesota], 2015) Ma, Shihui; Guvenen, FatihThis dissertation includes two chapters. The first chapter studies the labor market effect of the college expansion policy in China. In 1999, the Chinese government embarked on a program to increase the entry class to tertiary education by 42% from the previous year; the college admission rate stayed at the higher level since then. The expansion of college education represents a large and exogenous increase in supply of the college graduates to the labor market. This paper identifies the key role of the relative college labor supply in driving the changes of college wage premium after the expansion program. Assuming imperfect substitutability of workers in different education and age groups, I propose an overlapping-generation model with endogenous educational choice to account for college premium trends in distinct demographic groups. The estimation results provide the basis for evaluating the welfare effects of the college expansion in different subgroups. In the second chapter, which is co-authored with Huo Zhen, we try to understand the excess consumption volatility in the emerging countries. In emerging markets, business cycles are characterized by higher consumption volatility relative to output and strongly counter-cyclical current accounts. Meanwhile, agents in emerging countries face higher uncertainty in forecasting economic fundamentals. We build a general equilibrium business cycle model with heterogeneous income profiles and imperfect information. Agents observe their income to learn the growth rate of their individual human capital and the growth rate of the aggregate economy. Due to information frictions, a shock to the growth rate of the aggregate economy will be partly attributed to the growth rate of agents' own human capital, the latter of which has more persistent effects on agents' life-time income. As a result, the economy features higher consumption volatility than the output. Quantitatively, we find that the model can successfully explain the excessive volatility of consumption and generate a strongly negative correlation between the trade balance and output for a wide range of TFP and income processes.Item Essays in international economics and macroeconomics([University of Minnesota], 2017) Ayres Queiroz da Silva, Joao Luiz; Kehoe, Timothy; Amador, ManuelThe three chapters of this dissertation investigate major puzzles in international economics and macroeconomics. Chapter 1 proposes a new measure of knowledge production within corporations and analyzes how the production and flow of knowledge within multinational cor- porations can account for the cross-country correlation in corporate sector GDP fluctuations. Chapter 2 studies how fluctuations in the price of primary commodities can account for fluctua- tions in bilateral real exchange rates between the United States and United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan. Finally, Chapter 3 studies the role of firm entry in accounting for the slow recovery in employment following the World Economic Crisis in 2008–2009.Item Tax competition, tax policy, and innovation([The Ohio State University], 2017) Wang, Yuan; Lam, Pok-SangMy research concerns how governments make economic decisions and interact with other governments, to increase social welfare; in particular, my focus lies in the area of taxation and technological innovation. In a globalized economy with mobile capital, increasing interest has been paid to capital tax policy. My research is among the first to examine empirically and explain theoretically the tax competition among states in the U.S. Moreover, I also study how state governments set their tax rates using historical data and explain why the pattern observed is different from the zero-tax theory. Due to the absence of state-level average capital tax rate data, I first construct a panel dataset of average capital income tax rates at the state level for the period 1958-2007 for the capital taxation studies. In Chapter 1, I analyze the tax policy of each individual state government. Empirical evidence implies that tax rates are history-dependent. I provide an alternative explanation for nonzero capital tax rate, reexamining Ramsey's (1927) rule. With a lack of commitment power from government, households form adaptive expectations on capital tax rates. The equilibrium capital tax rate is thus history-dependent with a balanced-budget requirement on state governments. The investment decision combines income and substitution effects, and the U.S. states differ on investment sensitivity to capital tax rates. I provide empirical findings on investment sensitivity for each state, and then a structural model is applied to replicate the empirical. In Chapter 2, I analyze the pattern of strategic interaction on capital tax rates among states in the U.S. This paper is the first to apply MLE estimation of the SAR panel data model with fixed-effects to study tax competition behavior. Through a joint investigation into both tax competition behavior and capital allocation decision, I demonstrate the existence of capital tax competition among states in the South and West, but competition is less significant in the Midwest and Northeast. I then apply a high-order SAR panel data estimation with fixed-effects to study the impact of population growth on tax competition, and results suggest that faster population growth significantly relates to stronger reaction to changes in neighbors' tax policy. I also apply two weighting schemes of neighbors to validate the findings. A two-period structural model with a saving decision is developed to explain this result. The model features a capital dilution effect which is also tested empirically. In Chapter 3, a quality ladder model is developed in which the technology gap between the North and the South is endogenously determined. A stronger intellectual property rights (IPR) in the South discourages imitation and reduces the FDI cycle length. The optimal IPR strength balances two effects, long-run and short-run effects, and it is non-monotonic in the market size and increasing in the number of imitating firms. The social welfare of the South is decreasing in the FDI cycle length, but is decreasing in IPR strength given cycle length.Item Essays on information frictions in economics([University of Minnesota], 2016) Paluszynski, Radoslaw; Amador, Manuel; Kehoe,Timothy J.This dissertation consists of three chapters. The unifying topic of this collection is the impact of information frictions and lack of commitment on economic outcomes, in particular on prices. The first two chapters are dedicated to the study of the European sovereign debt crisis of 2008-2014. This episode of global economic importance was marked with a surge in government bond yields on unprecedented scale among developed countries in modern history. The peak of the crisis occurred with a significant lag following the initial shocks to output, even though governments did not undertake the fiscal adjustments necessary to prevent a further increase in default risk. I show that these observations are at odds with the predictions of existing sovereign debt models and propose a new theory that features incomplete, symmetric (in Chapter 1) and asymmetric (in Chapter 2) information about the country's economic outlook. In a calibrated model, the delay arises as a result of the markets' learning process, while the government optimally postpones debt reduction in order not to send a negative signal about the underlying state of the economy. In the third chapter, written jointly with Pei Cheng Yu, we study optimal pricing in markets characterized by long-term relationship and information asymmetries between the firm and its customers. As an example of such a market, we show that life insurance premiums have displayed a significant degree of rigidity over the past two decades. On average, prices took over 3 years to adjust and the magnitude of these one-time jumps exceeded 10%. This stands in sharp contrast with the dynamics of the corresponding marginal cost which exhibited considerable volatility since 1990 due to the movements in the interest and mortality rates. We build a model with consumer hold-up problem that captures these empirical findings. Price rigidity arises as an optimal response to the relationship-specific investment the consumers need to make before buying. The optimal contract takes the form of a simple cutoff rule: premiums are rigid for all cost realizations smaller than the threshold, and adjustments must be large and are only possible when cost realizations exceed it.Item Essays on financial markets and macroeconomic activities([Boston University], 2014) Mok, Junghwan; Gilchrist, SimonThis thesis consists of three papers addressing different aspects of financial markets and macroeconomic activities. Firm Risks, Credit, and Labor Market Fluctuations studies the effect of changes in firm risks on the cyclical properties of the labor market. I develop a general equilibrium model in which the adjustment of employment is costly. Financial frictions arise from the limited liability property of the contract between lenders and firms. The changes in firm risks alter the amount of debt that firms can borrow to finance their working capital. This mechanism amplifies labor market fluctuations and displays a countercyclical external finance premium, consistent with the empirical evidence. Shadow Banks and Stabilization Policies studies the interaction between commercial banks and shadow banks and the effect of stabilization policies. I develop a general equilibrium model in which the shadow banks obtain loans from commercial banks in the form of short-term collateralized debt. The moral hazard creates volatile leverage of shadow banks, which makes the economy more vulnerable to economic shocks. Upon an aggregate disturbance, a stabilization policy in the form of direct lending is relatively more efficient than policies aimed at the shadow-banking sector. Bank Capital and Lending: An Analysis of Commercial Banks in the United States empirically evaluates the impact of bank capital on lending patterns of commercial banks in the United States. Using two different measures of capital, namely the capital adequacy ratio and tier 1 ratio, we find a moderate relationship between bank equity and lending. We also use an innovative instrumental variables methodology that helps us overcome the endogeneity issues that are common in such analyses.Item Essays in economics and econometrics([University of New South Wales], 2015) Finlay, Richard; Kulish, Mariano; Morley, JamesThe body of this thesis consists of three published papers written while enrolled in a PhD; in addition, two published papers completed while enrolled in a Master of Economics are included in an appendix. Of the five papers, four are largely empirical in nature, with the subject matter reflecting my (and my employer the Reserve Bank of Australia’s) interest in areas relevant to policy-making institutions in Australia. The findings of this body of work can be summarised as follows: housing wealth effects in Australia arise from an easing of collateral constrains and a common association between rising house prices and another factor such as rising income expectations, rather than through ‘traditional wealth effects’; the rise in Australian household saving over the 2000s appears to have been driven by a reduction in permanent income expectations following the financial crisis and a desire to pay down debt and rebuild assets; negative credit‐supply shocks explain one-third to one-half of the fall in credit growth seen over the financial crisis, and around one-sixth of the fall in GDP growth, and so played an important but not dominant role in economic outcomes over the period; and much of the quarter-to-quarter volatility in Australian GDP data appears due to measurement error. The fifth paper is very different — it is a theoretical econometrics paper with little obvious application to policy-making. The paper is nonetheless a contribution to the literature in that it makes available via construction a new class of highly flexible (in terms of both permissible marginal distribution and permissible correlation structure) non-Gaussian random field, for possible use in economic and/or financial modelling.Item Essays on money and financial institutions in the history of economic thought, USA history, and theory([University of California], 2015) Komai, Alejandro Toyofusa; Richardson, Gary; Rocheteau, GuillaumeI study the institution of money. I provide a history of the real bills doctrine in its various forms through debates with the quantity theory of money. I provide a brief history of financial regulation in the USA. I use a monetary history of the USA to motivate a search and matching model of transition from commodity money to fiat. I provide a theoretical underpinning to the fact that monetary history is a history of commodity money. I extend my model to consider convertible money, oligarchy, two currencies, money and credit, and Aztec money.Item Essay on macroeconomics and expectations([University of California], 2018) Nicolò, Giovanni; Farmer, Roger E. A.; Tornell, AaronMy dissertation focuses on the interactions between the conduct of U.S. monetary policy and the expectations formed by households, firms and public institutions about the state of economy. The first two chapters develop new methods that I use in the subsequent chapters to study how expectations formed by economic agents about future economic conditions affect a given economy. The second chapter considers and extends the work in Farmer (2012a) to explain U.S. post-war data, and shows that it outperforms conventional economic theories due to its ability to account for persistent movements in the data. The last chapter explores how the effectiveness of monetary policy changed in the U.S. post-war period, and I provide evidence that since the early 1980's the monetary authority implemented policies that reduced economic uncertainty deriving from unforeseen changes in the expectations about future inflation.Item Using social network analysis for civil infrastructure management([Mississippi State University], 2015) Vechan, Eric; Truax, Dennis D.; El-adaway, Islam H.It is essential to build, maintain, and use our transportation systems in a manner that meets our current needs while addressing the social and economic needs of future generations. In today’s world, transportation congestion causes serious negative impacts to our societies. To this end, researchers have been utilizing various statistical methods to better study the flow of traffic into the road networks. However, these valuable studies cannot realize their true potential without solid in-depth understanding of the connectivity between the various traffic intersections. This paper bridges the gap between the engineering and social science domains. To this end, the authors propose a dynamic social network analysis framework to study the centrality of the existing road networks. This approach utilizes the field of network analysis where: (1) visualization and modeling techniques allow capturing the relationships, interactions, and attributes of and between network constituents, and (2) mathematical measurements facilitate analyzing quantitative relationships within the network. Connectivity and the importance of each intersection within the network will be understood using this method. The author conducted social network analysis modeling using three studies in Louisiana and two studies in Mississippi. Four types of centrality analysis were performed to identify the most central and important intersections within each study area. Results indicate intersection social network analysis modeling aligns with current congestion studies and transportation planning decisions.Item Implications of population aging for education, technological progress and economic growth([Australian School of Business, UNSW], 2014) Xiao, Chen; Woodland, AlanThis thesis is primarily concerned with the potential roles of individual aging (changes in people’s productivity and innovation capacity from young to old) and population aging (increased proportion of old to young people in the population) in determining rates of innovation and technological progress. Since economic growth depends largely on innovation, this thesis will investigate whether and how economic growth is affected by individual aging or population aging.To study individual aging, this thesis constructs a model of technology innovation and adoption and economic growth. Individuals’ innovative and adoptive abilities change with age. This model shows that individual aging slows down technological progress of countries far from the world frontier more than it does for countries closer to the world frontier. This suggests that individual aging could be an explanation for the technology differences between developed and developing countries.To examine the impact of population aging on growth, this thesis constructs models combining population aging, discrete time overlapping-generation, endogenous economic growth and education in general equilibrium. Under both autarky and international trade environments, the impacts of population aging on three major aspects are studied, and they are educational efforts, directed technical change and skill premia. Population aging tends to increase educational efforts and the rate of technological progress. The impacts of population aging upon directed technical change depend on the relative strength of price and market size effects. Moreover, population aging decreases skill premia under autarky, but increases skill premia under trade equilibrium.Overall, this thesis highlights the important roles of individual and population aging in understanding innovation and economic growth.Item Essays in macroeconomics of emerging markets([Boston College], 2014) Bhate, Rucha; Ghironi, Fabio; Baum, ChristopherMy dissertation focuses on the macroeconomics of emerging and developing nations. This group of economies is characterized by significant differences in terms of institutional quality, financial development, as well as other cultural, social, political parameters. In turn, these structural heterogeneities exert considerable influence on their domestic economic environment, specifically impacting key macroeconomic indicators such as output, investment, consumption, foreign capital flows, exchange rates etc. Understanding these nuanced relationships and analyzing them from various dimensions has served as the motivation and the foundation of my doctoral research. The first essay is an empirical and theoretical investigation of Business Cycles and Macroeconomic Dynamics in post-independence India. India's growth performance was touted as ordinary relative to the rest of the world during the first three decades after it gained independence in 1947. However, path-breaking deregulation and liberalization reforms in the 80s and 90s led to substantial growth acceleration and India's metamorphosis into a market-based economic system with strong international ties. This makes the Indian case study really unique and fascinating. Using annual time series data, we document key business cycle properties of the Indian economy. Output, consumption and investment are more volatile in India compared to its developed country counterparts. As in developed countries, consumption is less volatile and investment is more volatile than output in the Indian data. In contrast, investment is not highly correlated with output in India. Moreover, India's economic landscape has undergone significant changes, both in terms of the absolute level and cyclical fluctuations, across the planning horizon. The presence of structural break is reported for major macroeconomic variables when we decompose the data into pre- and post-reform categories. We also test whether a standard real business cycle (closed economy) model with India-specific parameters can replicate the stylized features of the business cycle. The model includes a tax on capital income which acts as a disincentive for future investment, and the results indicate that a high volatility of the tax shock is required to produce the low investment output correlation. The model performs reasonably well in matching the correlation dynamics observed in the data. In the second essay, I examine Foreign Reserve accumulation in Developing Countries through the lens of Institutional Quality and Financial Development. In recent times, several emerging markets have been providing the rest of the world, and especially the United States, with net resources in the form of current account surpluses. The most noteworthy aspect of the surge in upstream foreign capital flows has been the enormous increase in international reserves held by several emerging economies. Whereas private capital flows are broadly in sync with the standard neoclassical model, capital outflows from relatively high-productivity emerging markets can be explained by the accumulation of official reserve assets. I investigate the foreign reserve dynamics in developing countries; from both an empirical and theoretical dimension. Using a novel panel dataset combining aspects of openness, institutional quality, and financial development and an innovative clustering method; I present a new approach to identify cross-national structural heterogeneity and assess its relationship with foreign reserves. I use partition-based cluster analysis to document underlying reserve dynamics and identify systematic variation across and between different country groups. The resulting cluster outputs reflect the presence of cross-national variations in reserve accumulation. Moreover, a series of the scatter plots encapsulating various dimensions of institutional quality and financial development points towards the resounding presence of structural heterogeneity in foreign reserve dynamics in our developing country sample. Cross section and panel data regressions reinforce the initial hypotheses concerning the role of institutional and financial development in international reserve dynamics of the developing world. I also build a theoretical model embedding the key insights from the empirical analyses in order to propose a coherent framework for explaining the link between institutions, financial development reserve accumulation. The model underscores the importance of financial market efficiency and the institutional environment in explaining reserve dynamics of major developing countries. A series of comparative static exercises shed light on the impact of heterogeneity in institutional parameters and foreign reserve policy on select macroeconomic variables. In a nutshell, by going beyond the regional differences, we provide a unique vantage point to understand how disparities in institutional and financial conditions influence reserve dynamics in different country clusters. Our results indicate that income, openness, institutional quality and financial development play an instrumental role in explaining the underlying patterns of reserves accumulation in the developing world. However, the effects of these structural indicators are markedly different across clusters of relatively similar countries in terms of their magnitude as well as direction.Item Rents and regulations in the developing world([Boston University], 2016) Schwab, Daniel; Mookherjee, DilipRegulations may end up harming the very people they are intended to protect, and an unexpected windfall may lead to upheaval rather than prosperity. In three chapters, I discuss how rents and regulations can affect lives and welfare in the developing world. In the first chapter, I examine employment protection legislation (EPL), which is intended to promote security for workers by placing restrictions on firing. Using India as a setting, I argue that EPL shifts jobs from the young to older workers. The identification strategy is based on Rajan and Zingales (1998), and relies on heterogeneity between manufacturing sectors. The impact of EPL is strongest in those manufacturing sectors where international evidence suggests employers most like to fire workers. Finally, I present suggestive evidence that the shift from young to old employment induced by EPL reduces total factor productivity of plants. The second chapter, coauthored with Eric Werker, demonstrates how rents slow down productivity growth. The negative effect is strongest in poor countries, suggesting that high profits stymie economic development rather than enable it. Consistent with the rent-seeking mechanism of our theory, we find that high rents are associated with a slower reduction in tariffs. We also provide evidence that a country's average mark-up in manufacturing is a strong negative predictor of future economic growth. The third and final chapter, which is based on joint work with Faisal Ahmed and Eric Werker, examines foreign aid and oil rents in the Middle East. Aid from oil-rich autocrats created unearned rents for many developing countries in the 1970s. We provide a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon, whereby autocrats experiencing a windfall in unearned income may find it optimal to donate some of it to other countries in order to make their own state a less attractive prize to potential insurgents.Item Essays on dynamic information economics([Boston University], 2014) Wong, Tak-Yuen; Miao, JianjunThis dissertation studies moral hazard problems and an information acquisition problem in dynamic economic environments. In chapter 1, I study a continuous-time principal-agent model in which a risk-neutral agent protected by limited liability exerts costly efforts to manage a project for her principal. Unobserved risk-taking by the agent is value-reducing in the sense that it increases the chance of large losses, even though it raises short-term profits. In the optimal contract, severe punishment that follows a large loss prevents the agent from taking hidden risks. However, after some histories, punishment can no longer be used because of limited liability. The principal allows the agent to take hidden risk when the firm is close to liquidation. In addition, I explore the roles of standard securities in implementing the optimal contract. The implementation shows that driven by the agency conflicts, incomplete hedging against Poisson risk provides incentives for the agent to take the safe project. Moreover, I study the optimality of "high-water mark" contract widely used in the hedge fund industry and find that "distance-to-threshold" is important in understanding the risk-shifting problem in a dynamic context. In chapter 2, I study a continuous-time moral hazard model in which the principal hires a team of agents to run the business. The firm consists of multiple divisions and agents exert costly efforts to improve the divisional cash flows. The firm size evolves stochastically based on the aggregate cash flows.The model delivers a negative relationship between firm sizes and pay-for-divisional incentives, and I characterize conditions under which joint/relative performance evaluation will be used. I also explore the implications of team production on the firm's optimal capital structure and financial policy. In chapter 3, I study a multi-armed bandits problem with ambiguity. Decision-maker views the probabilities underlying each arm as imprecise and his preference is represented by recursive multiple-priors. I show that the classical "Gittins Index" generalizes to a "Multiple-Priors Gittins Index". In the setting with one safe arm and one ambiguous arm, the decision-maker plays the ambiguous arm if its "Multiple-Priors Gittins Index" is higher than the return delivered by the safe arm. In the multi-armed environment, I obtain the "Multiple-Priors Index Theorem" which states that the optimal strategy for the decision-maker is to play the ambiguous arm with the highest Multiple-Priors Index.Item Multimodal transportation systems : modelling challenges([S.l.], 2012) Mahrous, Reem Fawzy; Brussel, M.J.G.; Bosch, F.H.M. van den; Maarseveen, M.F.A.M. van; Brands, T.Human mobility within an urban usually happens over a multimodal transportation network. For that reason, when studying, analyzing transportation systems we should not consider each mode of transport separately but we should look to it as multimodal transportation system with relations and dynamics between its components. In order to do any analysis relatedto transportation we need a model reflecting the multimodal nature of the system. The objective of the research is to develop a GIS data model for a multimodal transportation system combining different modes in one network that allows different modal combination in route planning. The modelling concept adopted in this research is formulated by exploring the different GIS modelling techniques formultimodal transportation from literature, and experimenting with them. It consists mainly on having a separate entity (layer, feature class...) for each mode route representing this mode’s network. Modes networks are physicallyseparated from each other. The separation is vertical for different modes and horizontal for the different routes of the same mode. Connecting these separated entities is done through connectors entities representing the transfer action from one route to the other. The concept is applied at ArcGIS platform. The effectiveness of the data model suggested is evaluated by developing a multimodal transportation network model for Enschede city incorporating bus, train, cycling and walking modes and performing path finding analysis with the developed network model. The model developed has proved satisfaction in finding route over a multimodal network using the suitable modal combination that achieves the least cost path. The developed model is also able to simulate all the possible transfer scenarios between the integrated modes and to integrate the cost associated with the different elements, the cost of travelling and the transfer cost. The whole route details including the step by step directions and the detailed as well as the overall cost are also provided with the route. Beside the path finding type of analysis, the data model presented in this research can be a platform for other transportation network based types of analysis.Item Essays on institutions, economic development, and inequality([Florida State University], 2014) Bennett, Daniel L.; Benson, Bruce L.; Gwartney, James D.It is commonly asserted that free market capitalism promotes economic efficiency at the expense of equality. This view is reflected in the common claim that the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The current research examines how economic institutions consistent with economic freedom, which approximates the degree to which a nation is committed to free market capitalism, impact economic inequality. Two common concepts of economic inequality are between-nation and within-nation inequality. Chapter two can be thought of how economic freedom impacts between-nation inequality. Institutions were largely spread throughout the world during the European colonization era, providing a natural experiment in history. The analysis simultaneously accounts for the two prevailing institutional theories of post-colonial development, settlement conditions and identity of the colonizer, to empirically examine the causal impact of economic institutions on comparative economic development. The results suggest that favorable settlements conditions and colonization by Britain resulted in the development of more market-oriented economic institutions, resulting in sustained long-run economic development. The positive impact of favorable settlement conditions on institutional and economic development was partially offset when France, Portugal, or Spain was the colonizer. Poor settlement conditions led to poor institutions and economic stagnation, regardless of the colonizer. The results are robust to a number of alternative theories of economic development, suggesting that economic freedom is a positive causal determinant of modern levels of per capita income and that institutional differences between countries are largely responsible for the large disparity in average living standards that exists in the world today. As such, a significant portion of between-nation inequality is attributable to heterogeneous levels of economic freedom. How economic freedom impacts within nation inequality has been much less studied, partially because of the lack of inequality measures that are comparable across countries. Chapter three examines the concept and measurement of economic inequality. It describes the construction of a custom inequality dataset as well as several other inequality measures that are used for the analyses in chapters four and five. Chapter four examines the ambiguous economic freedom-inequality relationship. A simple theoretical framework demonstrates this ambiguity. A review of the existing literature suggests that the empirical relationship follows the theoretical, as several studies have looked at the issue empirically but often reached contradictory results. Each of the main studies has employed a different econometric model, possibly providing an explanation for the inconsistent results. Using eight alternative measures of inequality, additional empirical analysis of the four main econometric models from the literature suggests that the same model specifications are often sensitive to the measure of inequality and/or economic freedom, country sample, and/or time period examined. The analysis from chapter four suggests that additional research on the channels through which economic institutions impact inequality is needed. Chapter five is a first step in this direction, as it empirically examines the historical influence of factor endowments and legal tradition on the development of legal institutions and the rule of law, and their importance for determining modern levels of within-nation inequality. Consistent with the Engerman-Sokoloff and Friedman Hypotheses, elites in society have historically sought to protect their status and perpetuate inequality by influencing the development of legal institutions and the rule of law in their favor at the expense of the population. Factor endowments suitable for plantation relative to family farming and the receipt of the French civil law tradition aided the elites in their quest to perpetuate economic inequality through the creation of poor legal institutions, while endowments suitable for family farming and/or the receipt of one of the other legal traditions hindered these efforts. The results from this chapter suggest that legal and property rights institutions that promote equality before the law, which are characteristic of a market economy, result in more equitable distributions of income. Chapter six offers conclusions, summarizing the key findings and practical implications of the current research, as well as identifying several areas for future research.Item Essays on development economics and industrial organization([Boston University], 2015) Young, Nathaniel; Mookherjee, DilipThis dissertation studies two disparate topics in development economics and industrial organization respectively: (a) the role of financial intermediation in promoting economic growth in developing countries and (b) the effects of learning on agents' search behavior. The first essay investigates the effects of commercial banking on economic growth. The tendency of banks to locate in profitable areas experiencing higher growth typically complicates the identification of banking effects. I exploit a previously unstudied reform of bank branching policy in India between 2005-06 that led to a large expansion in private bank credit to financially underserved areas. Using iterations of a regression discontinuity design, I trace the exogenous expansion of banking services through time at the district level. I show this expansion produced positive effects in agriculture and manufacturing. I confirm greater gains in local GDP growth using remote sensing data to overcome the lack of official GDP statistics at the district level. These results offer evidence of a causal impact of financial system expansion on economic development. The second essay examines how the geographic reach of a bank's network of branches can affect its ability to spread risks across spatially separated regions. I investigate the causal impact of the spatial expansion of Indian banks resulting from the bank branching policy reform on smoothing the consumption of households with respect to local weather and agricultural productivity shocks. The third essay (coauthored with Sergei Koulayev) extends a model of sequential search for differentiated goods by relaxing the standard assumption of rational expectations. Agents are likely to refine their imperfect knowledge of product markets while searching. By introducing Bayesian learning into agents' beliefs, the model better replicates important aspects of search behavior. Using data from a popular internet hotel search site, we estimate lower median search costs in the model with Bayesian learning. Considering a counterfactual in which the first page of search results present the most popular hotel options, we estimate an increase in the number of successful searches.