| 11. |
- Pateli, Evangelia, 1983-
(författare)
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Essays on International Trade : Theory and Evidence on the Determinants and Implications of Firms' Import Behaviour
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aspires to further contribute to our understanding of both the determinants as well as the implications of intermediate goods trade. Faced with intensifying global competition, firms are increasingly developing their production process and their sourcing strategies beyond national borders in order to take advantage of lower costs, superior quality and technological advances.In the first two chapters, I analyse firm-level import decisions in an environment allowing for unintentional exchanges of import-relevant information between firms. I build on the idea that any import-specific knowledge acquired by established importers, in a given region/industry, spills over to prospective importers lowering the costs associated with entry in international markets for intermediates. Chapter 1, using firm-level import data on the universe of Swedish firms, at the product level and by source market for the period 1998-2011, provides evidence for the existence of import spillovers and offers insights into the mechanisms through which they operate. Chapter 2, sets out a theoretical framework formalising import spillovers and their implications for the firm’s import behaviour and for consumer welfare.In the third and last chapter of this thesis, I turn to intermediate import dependence with an aim to explain the lack of sensitivity of trade flows to exchange rate movements. I propose a tractable framework and study how real devaluations affect firm-level export decisions and export performance, as well as aggregate exports and welfare in an environment where final goods production uses both domestic and imported intermediates.
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| 12. |
- Pronin, Mathias, 1985-
(författare)
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Essays in Macroeconomics and Political Economy
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Response of the Riksbank to House Prices in SwedenIn the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, an environment of historically low interest rates and extensive household indebtedness in the OECD countries have triggered a vivid debate on whether central banks should react to house-price fluctuations in their pursuit of monetary policy. In Sweden, a period of low policy rates and house-price inflation was halted when the central bank increased the interest rates in 2010. This study investigates whether the Riksbank reacted to house prices in the period from 1993 to 2013. Using Bayesian methods and quarterly data, I estimate a DSGE model with patient and impatient households, where the central bank reacts to house-price inflation. The results suggest that the Riksbank did respond to house prices during the sample period. The findings are robust and plausible from an economic perspective. Wealth Distribution under Heterogeneous PreferencesThe standard macroeconomic framework of uninsurable idiosyncratic income risk fails to generate key features of the aggregate wealth distribution. Although the assumptions of heterogeneity of either impatience rate or risk aversion are common in the literature, they do not reflect the evidence and common belief that both parameters are dispersed across the population. I extend the standard framework by allowing for heterogeneity in both impatience and risk aversion. The results suggest that this richer framework outperforms previous work in terms of matching actual properties of the wealth distribution. In particular, the model presented generates a greater concentration of wealth at the top of the distribution and a greater mass of poor households than models with preference heterogeneity in only one dimension. Political Budget Cycles and Dependence on Foreign Aid This study poses the question of whether countries with a higher share of foreign aid per GDP exhibit larger political budget cycles. Using data on a large sample of countries, I find a significant negative effect of aid dependency on the budget surplus in election years. The effect is quantitatively important and implies that on average, a 1% increase in foreign aid per GDP is associated with a 0.2 percentage point larger deficit in election years. The results are robust to the model specification, inclusion of control variables, and other political budget cycles' determining factors described in the recent literature.
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| 13. |
- Rapanos, Theodoros, 1985-
(författare)
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Essays on the Economics of Networks Under Incomplete Information
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Social networks constitute a major channel for the diffusion of information and the formation of attitudes in a society. Introducing a dynamic model of social learning, the first part of this thesis studies the emergence of socially influential individuals and groups, and identifies the characteristics that make them influential. The second part uses a Bayesian network game to analyse the role of social interaction and conformism in the making of decisions whose returns or costs are ex ante uncertain.
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| 14. |
- Si, Wei, 1988-
(författare)
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Empirical Essays in Labor and Development Economics
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three self-contained empirical essays in labor and development economics.Diverse Expertise, Peer Effects, and Research Productivity: Does diversity in idea space matter? We empirically explore whether the cognitive distance between collaborators affects peer effects and productivity in creating knowledge. We measure the cognitive distance between two researchers based on their publication distributions and citation relations across academic journals in which they have publications. Using individual-level panel data from the Web of Science databases of academic papers published from 1980 to 2013, we estimate the changes in productivity of the coauthors of active and eminent life scientists who passed away unexpectedly and prematurely to examine whether the impacts on coauthors differ with the cognitive distance. The results show that cognitively close coauthors are more likely to experience a lasting decrease in research productivity for both quantity and quality measures, while cognitively distant coauthors are affected mainly in output quantity. The findings suggest that both knowledge spillovers and skill complementarity play a role in collaborations. The loss of an irreplaceable source of ideas seems to have a more adverse impact on a scientist's productivity than the potentially imperfect skill substitution that follows such a loss.Public Health Insurance and the Labor Market: Evidence from China's Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance provides empirical evidence on labor market effects of public health insurance, using evidence from a national public health insurance program in China, the Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance (URBMI), which targeted residents in urban areas, who were not insured by the pre-existing employment-based health insurance. I find that the URBMI did not have a significant average causal effect on employment for the sample as a whole. However, URBMI increased self-employment among workers who used to be employees in the formal sector, indicating a reduction in job lock. After the program was implemented, employment in the informal sector among women and the lower-educated increased, while labor supply among people with more schooling decreased. The results are consistent with evidence of the labor market impacts of public health insurance on reducing job lock, increasing informality, and affecting labor supply for different sub-populations.Higher Education and Women's Empowerment: Evidence from China's Higher Education Expansion studies the impact of higher education on women’s empowerment, taking advantage of China’s higher education expansion in the late 1990s. Higher education may potentially foster women’s empowerment by reducing gender stereotyping and promoting women in the labor market. I estimate the impacts on educational attainment, attitudes on gender norms, labor market outcomes, and marital matching. The empirical results show that the reform has significantly increased higher educational attainment for women. However, it did not change traditional gender norms and marital matching patterns concerning labor market outcomes. The results may be attributed to the fact that there was no improvement of women’s disadvantaged status in the labor market and households after the expansion. The findings suggest that it is critical to promote gender equality in the labor market and help women to overcome the dilemma between career and family to foster female empowerment.
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| 15. |
- Sternbeck Fryxell, Vanessa, 1984-
(författare)
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Essays on Interbank Markets
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation consists of three self-contained chapters.Price Segmentation on the Interbank Market. Interbank markets are often characterized by a core-periphery structure. The core-banks may hold a favorable position in the short-term unsecured interbank market due to e.g. greater market knowledge, market power, and stronger relationships. In this chapter, I use a data set on the total unsecured interbank lending and borrowing made by the seven largest banks in Sweden. I find that there exists a significant segmentation in prices for core-banks vs. periphery-banks. In addition, the size of the segmentation in pricing is connected to the amount of liquidity available on the interbank market. This means that monetary policy instruments that increase the size of the liquidity surplus risk increase the segmentation in prices and thereby diminish the efficiency of the implementation of monetary policy through the main monetary policy rate.Systemic Liquidity Risk on the Swedish Interbank Market. This chapter aims at measuring systemic liquidity risk on the Swedish interbank market using the novel approach of Cohen-Cole, Patacchini and Zenou (2015), allowing for both positive and negative measures of systemic liquidity risk. This chapter brings this model to the data, using restricted Swedish interbank data collected by the Riksbank where it is possible to identify the banks of the data sets, thereby allowing us to control for bank-specific characteristics. We find that the systemic liquidity risk increased in 2008-2009 as the banks became reluctant to both lend and borrow. For lending networks, this is expected because of the decrease in confidence between banks. For borrowing, this is likely a result of the vast increase in available liquidity stemming from loan facilities by the central bank. The implication is that liquidity shocks were amplified in the interbank network. In addition, we identify the Key Player among banks and show that this does not coincide with simple measures such as degree and total volume, and can thus complement the analysis in identifying systemically important institutions.Committed Quotes in Reference Rate Mechanisms. When the LIBOR scandal was revealed in 2012, it became clear that interbank reference rates were manipulated. Following this revelation, policy makers around the world started to suggest adjustments to decrease the risk of manipulation. One of these adjustments that was presented was the committed quotes reference rate mechanism that forces the banks to trade with each other using the submitted quotes. In this chapter, I study the panel bank's change in behavior following the introduction of a committed quotes mechanism using data on submitted quotes for the Copenhagen Interbank Offered Rate (CIBOR). The results suggest that the behavior of the banks changed; the intraday variance increased by more than 40 percent in connection with the introduction. I also present a simple model to illustrate the underlying reasons for the detected change in behavior. The driving force in the model is the banks' desire to submit quotes close to the expected market rate. Introducing a commitment to trade on the quotes then pushes the submissions closer to the banks' interest rates which leads to a larger intraday variance. However, the quotes will never, everything else unchanged, equal the banks' interest rates.
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