Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Agricultural prices – European Union countries'

Why did EC enlargement negotiations with Spain take so long? This thesis argues that agricultural issues dominated negotiations despite the political and strategic aims of stabilizing Western Europe's southern flank that underpinned the raison d'être of this enlargement. The framework of Historical New Institutionalism is used to argue that several 'biases' operating at three levels account for the length and nature of these negotiations. At the first level, the 'bilateral' format of the negotiation procedure between Spain and the EC favoured existing EC members and protected the acquis communautaire. The Community's negotiating positions, as bargains in themselves, tended to be inflexible, and reduced Spain's input in the discussions and in the agenda-setting process. At the EC level, the CAP exhibited an unusual capacity to withstand the changes required by enlargement. This was because the EC's decisionmaking structure was fragmented into sectors and levels which allowed a closely knit 'policy community' to run the CAP in a way that was relatively insulated from other issue-areas. Change in the CAP occurred to cope with enlargement, but in a path-dependent way, passing the cost of adaptation on to Spain. At the national level, member states' so-called national interests with regard to enlargement were mixed, with no clear priority, and conflicting sectoral views. This resulted from the mechanisms of interest intermediation and inter-departmental co-ordination, which shaped the formulation and representation of national views in Brussels. Spain's accession was finally made possible when new redistributive policies for the Mediterranean and fresh budgetary resources were agreed. These were approved as part the wider package-deals surrounding the Single Market project and the Single European Act. HNI provides a new and persuasive framework with which to understand the difficulties of institutional change associated with enlargement negotiations.

Agricultural policy within the European Union (EU) is but one of the founding pillars upon which unification was developed. Negotiated out of a post-war Europe, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) emphasized the protection of the domestic market, through government subsidies and payment programmes, artificially raising the price of domestic products while restricting access for the foreign agricultural producers. The objective of this paper is to explore the link between the agricultural decisions made by the EU and the effects on citizens in the Least Developed Countries (LDC). To develop a comprehensive understanding of the issue at hand a review of the existing literature will be necessary, as well as an analysis of the available quantitative data. The findings revealed that the CAP is but one factor that impacts development of agriculture in LDC’s, many other factors, such as international and bi-lateral trade agreements, government institutions, and political lobbying also influence the outcome.

L'Union européenne (UE) est le plus grand marché agricole. La plupart des sources d'importation de l' UE sont les pays en développement (PED) et les pays les moins avancés (PMA). Les exportations agricoles des PMA jouent un rôle important dans leur développement. Le commerce international peut agir en tant que moteur de croissance et de réduction de pauvreté. Un accès au marché accru pour les PMA leur fournirait les moyens de favoriser le développement. Les accords commerciaux préférentiels jouent un rôle central pour de nombreux PED. Certains des régimes préférentiels de l'UE accordent un libre accès au marché aux PMA (comme TSA-Tout sauf les armes). Néanmoins, l'UE permettra un accès aux importations de riz exempt de droits et de quotas pour les PMA à partir de septembre 2009. Par conséquent, cette recherche se concentre sur la relation entre les accords commerciaux de l'UE et les modifications d'accès au marché des bénéficiaires. Cette thèse se compose de quatre papiers. D'abord, les effets des accords commerciaux de l'UE sont étudiés à partir d'un modèle de gravité et de données agrégées. Les résultats indiquent qu'un grand nombre d'accords commerciaux soutiennent les exportations agricoles des PED sur le marché européen. Néanmoins, un des accords unilatéraux les plus importants (TSA) a un effet négatif sur les exportations agricoles vers l'UE. Ensuite, les modifications d'accès au marché pour un produit particulier (ici le riz) sont considérées avec un modèle d'Armington. Nos résultats empiriques prouvent que, lorsque le modèle d'Armington est estimé en ignorant les droits de douane et le paramètre non-homothétique, les résultats peuvent être biaisés et de validité incertaine. En outre, les simulations démontrent que malgré une grande différence entre les taxes à l'importation du Suriname et ceux des autres pays, sa part de marché ne changerait pas considérablement. Cela démontre la faible capacité des PMA (tels que le Surinam) à concurrencer les pays développés (tels que les USA)
The European Union (EU) is the biggest agricultural market. Most of EU's import sources are developing countries and least developed contries 'LDCs). The agricultural exports of LDCs have an important role in development of these countries. The international trade can act as an engine of growth and poverty reduction. Enhanced market access for the LDCs would provide them the means to harness trade for development and poverty reduction. Preferential trade agreements play a central role in forming trade opportunies for numerous developing countries. The EU supplies numerous trading agreements. Some of EU's preferential regimes grant free-duty market access for the LDCs (like EBA-Everything But Arms). Nevertheless, the Eu will allow duty-free and quota-free access to imports of rice originating from the LDCs from September 2009 within the framework of EBA. Hence, this research focuses on the relationship between EU's trading agreements and changes in the market access of beneficiaries. This research consists of four papers. First, the effects of the EU's trading agreements are studied with a gravity model and aggregated data. The results indicate that a large number of Eu's RTAs support the agricultural exports of developing countries to the Eu market. Nevertheless, one of the most important and unilateral RTAs (EBA) has the negative effect over agricultural exports to Eu. Second, the changes of market access for a special product (here rice) are considered with an Armington model and disaggregated data. Our empirical results show that when the Armington model is estimated ignoring the tariff and the non-homothetic parameter, results may be biased and of uncertain validity. In addition, the simulation findings demonstrate that in spite of a large difference between import tariffs rates of Surname and other countries, its market share would not change greatly. It shows the weak capacity of LDCs (such as Surinam) to compete with developed countries (such as the US)

Thesis (MScAgric)--Stellenbosch University, 2004.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: European-South African trade relations concerrnng wine and spirits are characterized by various opportunities and, at the same time, a range of conflicts. The latter notably relates to the dispute over geographical indications and designations of origin. Considering this confusing amalgamation of discord and harmony, it is the purpose of this study, entitled "International Trade in Wine and Geographical Indications - Common Interests between the EU and South Africa", to understand the rationale for trade in wine from both sides of the coin. Moreover, this research assesses possible multilateral and bilateral solutions for dealing with trade frictions between the EU and South Africa and identifies common interests with a view to establish a lasting foundation for blossoming trade in wine and sustained growth. The underlying methodology is a qualitative interpretative approach and bases on insights into modern marketing and international management theory. On this basis the "objective" interests of the EU and South Africa in trade in wine are analysed in order to assess the coming into existence of the Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement as well as the Wine and Spirits Agreement. Pivot of these trade negotiations is the dispute on geographical indications, which is scrutinized by looking into relevant chapters of the WTO and its TR.IPS Agreement. With regards to the Wine and Spirits Agreement it is salient to ask whether it is economically and politically reasonable for South Africa to accept a financial package from the EU to secure the 'voluntary' phasing out of a number of trademarks and geographical indications. The study concludes with an outlook regarding the globalisation of the world's wine market, potential future investment flows between the EU and South Africa and the need for an effective marketing strategy in order to become or remain global player in an increasing competitiveness caused by globalisation.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Europese en Suid-Afrikaanse handelsverhoudinge in wyn en spiritualieë word gekenmerk deur verskeie geleenthede en terselfdertyd 'n reeks konflikte. Laasgenoemde hou merkbaar verband met die twis oor geografiese indikatore en aanwysings van oorsprong. Gegewe hierdie verwarrende tweedrag en harmonie, is die doel van hierdie studie, getiteld "Internasionale Handel in Wyn en Geografiese Aanwysings - Gemeenskaplike belange tussen die EU en Suid-Afrika", om die 'rationale' agter die wynhandel van twee kante te beskou. Verder ondersoek hierdie navorsing moontlike multi- en bilaterale oplossings vir die handelswrywing tussen die EU en Suid-Afrika en identifiseer gemeenskaplike belange met die doelom 'n fondament te bou vir volhoubare groei in die wynhandel. Die onderliggende metodologie is 'n kwalitatiewe verklarende benadering, gebaseer op insigte uit moderne bemarkings- en bestuursteorie. Op hierdie vlak word die 'objektiewe' belange van die EU en Suid-Afrika in die wynhandel ontleed om gevolgtrekkings oor die Handels-, Ontwikkelings- en Samewerkingsooreenkoms en die Wyn- en Spiritualieë- Ooreenkoms te maak. Onderliggend aan hierdie onderhandelinge is die twis oor geografiese aanwysings, wat noukeurig ondersoek is deur relevante hoofstukke van die WHO Ooreenkoms en sy TRIPS-komponent te raadpleeg. Met verwysing na die Wyn- en Spiritualieë- Ooreenkoms is dit voor die hand liggend om te vra of dit ekonomies en polities verstandig vir Suid-Afrika is om 'n finansiële pakket van die EU te aanvaar in ruil vir die vrywillige uitfasering van 'n aantal handelsmerke en geografiese aanwysings. Die studie sluit af met '11" blik op globalisering van die wêreld se wynmarkte, die potensiële toekomstige vloei van beleggings tussen die EU en Suid-Afrika, en die behoefte aan 'n effektiewe bemarkingsstrategie om 'n globale speler te word.

Thesis (MBA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2000.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: As the Trade Development and Co-operation Agreement (TDCA) creates competitive challenges and opportunities, labour and capital will seek the highest returns, dri ving out less efficient performances while bolstering more efficient enterprises and industries. This dynamic process of adjustments will continue throughout the implementation of this agreement. The South African government sees the agreement with the European Union as a step towards restructuring the country's economy and making it part of the rapidly changing world economy. This policy view of the South African government will result in those sectors of the economy that are not internationally competitive, receiving no support from government. Consequently these sectors will decrease in time. Of the three agricultural profiles studied, fresh fruit (deciduous fruit) will benefit the most from the TDCA. The most obvious effect the agreement will have on the sector is the saving on customs duties payable on exports to the EU. An estimate on 1997 trade figures revealed that in the short term the deciduous fruit industry will save approximately RI00 million. Over the implementation period of 10 years, the industry will save about Rl billion. After that, savings amounting to approximately R125 million per annum should be possible. The canned fruit sector is an export-driven industry that exports about 90 per cent of its products, 50 per cent of which is exported to the EU. The export tariffs to the EU are very high. As non-EU member, South Africa is the biggest provider of canned fruit to the EU. Some analyses revealed that the total savings in tariffs for the first year of implementation will be R25 million. The industry stands to save approximately R100 million over the implementation period. At the EU's request, South Africa agreed to negotiate a separate Wine and Spirits Agreement. The EU believes that South Africa's continued use of certain "geographical indications" or terms is in breach of Article 23 of the Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement. The quotas granted by the EU on wine and sparkling wine cover 79 per cent of South African exports to the EU. South Africa granted the EU a 0.26 million litre quota for sparkling wine and a 1 million-litre quota for bottled wine. SA will phase out the use of the terms "port", "sherry", "grappa", ouzo", "korn" , "jagertee" and "pacharan" over agreed time periods. The issue will be taken to the WTO for a ruling in this regard. The EU has agreed to grant SA a duty-free tariff quota for wine but has suspended the tariff quota until the Wine and Spirits agreement has been signed. The EU will also provide financial assistance of 15 million ECU to help restructure the SA wine and spirits sector. The South African agricultural industry should take note of the constantly changing international marketing environment. The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed with the European Union opens up new markets and enhances existing ones that must be exploited. It is imperative that every role player should evaluate the level of competitiveness of his or her enterprise. Thus the message is very clear: Agricultural production with an international trading view is the only sustainable road to follow.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Soos die Handel, Ontwikkelings en Samewerkingsooreenkoms kompeterende geleenthede en uitdagings skep, sal arbeid en kapitaal verskuif na die hoogste opbrengste beskikbaar. In hierdie proses sal daar wegbeweeg word van onvoldoende prestasies en sal effektiewe ondememings en industriee floreer. Hierdie dinarniese proses van herstruktuering sal voortduur regdeur die implementeringsperiode van hierdie handelsooreenkoms. Die Suid Afrikaanse regering beskou die ooreenkoms met die Europese Unie as 'n belangrike stap in die proses om die land se ekonomie te herstrukltureer en so deel te maak van die vinnig veranderende wereld ekonomie. Hierdie regerings beleid sal daartoe lei dat sektore wat nie intemasionaal mededingend is nie, geen ondersteuning vanaf die regering sal ontvang nie. Met tyd sal hierdie sektore verdwyn. Van die drie landbousektore wat bestudeer is, sal vars vrugte (sagte vrugte) die meeste voordeel trek uit die ooreenkoms. Die besparing van aksynsbelasting op die uitvoere na die Europese Unie is die mees kenmerkendste voordeel vir die sektor. 'n Beraming gebaseer op 1997 handels syfers toon 'n jaarlikse besparing van plus minus R100 miljoen. Deur die hele implementeringsperiode, sal die besparing plus minus Rl biljoen beloop. Na afloop van die implementeringsperiode, sal jaarlikse besparing van plus minus R125 miljoen moontlik wees. Die inmaak vrugte sektor is 'n uitvoer gedrewe industrie wat gemiddeld 90 persent van hul prod uk uitvoer. Van hierdie uitvoere is 50 persent bestem vir die Europese Unie. Die uitvoertariewe na die Europese Unie is baie hoog. As nie-lidland, is Suid Afrika die grootste verskaffer van geblikte vrugte aan die Europese Unie. Beramings voorsien dat die sektor 'n totale besparing vir die eerste jaar van implemetering van plus minus R25 miljoen kan beloop. Die industrie kan soveel as R100 rniljoen oor die implementeringsperiode bespaar. Op die Europese Unie se versoek, het Suid Afrika ingestem om 'n afsonderlike Wyn en Spiritualie ooreenkoms te onderhandel. Die Europese Unie beweer dat Suid Afrika se gebruik van sekere "geografiese aanduidings" of terme, In verbreking is van Artikel 23 van die Handelsverwante Aspekte van die Intellektuele Eiendomsregte Ooreenkoms. Wyn en vonkelwyn kwotas wat deur die Europese Unie aan Suid Afrika toegestaan is, beloop 79 persent van die uitvoere na die Europese Unie. Suid Afrika het die Europese Unie In kwota van 0.26 miljoen liter vir vonkelwyn en 1 miljoen kwota vir gebottelde wyn toegestaan. Voorts sal Suid Afrika die terme "port", "sherry", "grappa", "ouzo", "kom" , "jagertee" and "pacharan" met die ooreengekome peri odes uitfaseer. Die aspek sal egter na die WHO geneem word vir In finale beslissing. Die Europese Unie het ooreengekom om aan Suid Afrika In tarief vrye kwota vir wyn toe te staan, maar het dit opgehef tot tyd en wyl die Wyn en Spiritualie ooreenkoms onderteken is. Die Europese Unie sal ook finansiele ondersteuning van 15 miljoen ECU skenk om die Suid Afrikaanse Wyn en Spiritualiee industrie te help hestruktureer. Suid Afrikaanse Landbou sal notisie moet neem van die konstante verandering in die intemasionale bemarkingsomgewing. Die Vrye Handelsooreenkoms wat geteken is met die Europese Unie, open nuwe markte en sal bestaande markte bevorder. Hierdie geleenthede moet benut word. Dit is baie belangrik dat elke rolspeler sy vlak van kompeterende vermoe moet evalueer, om so sy eie siening oor die ooreenkoms te kan uitspreek. Hieruit is die boodskap dus baie duidelik: Landbou produksie met In intemasionale handels uitkyk, is die enigste volhoubare pad om te volg.

The European Union has been a discussed subject for many years. The conversed areas have been everything from special state interests, refugee crisis, sizes of cucumbers and if the European Union has a sense of community. One of the most debatable fields has been the agricultural policy; control of goods by the union and influence on other markets. This study illustrates what the union controls in form of agricultural production, although mostly aspects around the international agency of the EU, illustrated by the common agricultural policy.   In the liberalised decade of 2010, the rich and powerful European Union still continues to maintain protectionism and customs, and at the same time conduct an aggressive expansion policy. Their current actions in this political area appear abnormal when observed from an analytical perspective. The nations within the EU are all in front line when it comes to everything from technical to democratic perspectives. They are all advocates of freedom, human rights and openness, but are at the same time part of this controlled and restrictive policy regarding their food.   The aim of this essay is not only to illustrate the relationship between the EU and its member states in question of agricultural policies. Also how less fortunate parts of the globe, in particular sub-Saharan African countries, are affected by the contemporary agricultural policies. The presented empirical material will be analysed through three political ideologies, which will represent conservatism, socialism and liberalism within the international political economy. The ideologies combined with the empirical material together with ideology analysis and qualitative text analysis will discuss the question of the essay, which will end up in the final analysis and conclusion.

La Pologne et la Turquie témoignent depuis plusieurs années d’une transition économique semblable à travers une forte croissance du PIB, une augmentation des exportations et surtout une hausse des flux internationaux de capitaux. Malgré la transformation économique, le secteur agricole demeure encore une activité importante dans leur économie respective. Comparée aux autres pays européens, le décalage important entre la contribution de l’agriculture au PIB et le nombre des personnes employées révèle une très faible productivité de la main-d’œuvre. L’agriculture représente une source principale d’emploi notamment dans la zone rurale. En dépit de la diminution constante de l’emploi agricole de ces dernières années, il existe une surpopulation dans le secteur et un problème du chômage déguisé. La Pologne, membre de l’Union européenne (UE) depuis mai 2004, a bénéficié fortement des fonds structurels afin d’améliorer et de moderniser son agriculture. Quant à la Turquie, pays candidat à l’UE depuis octobre 2005, elle tente d’adapter son agriculture à la politique agricole commune (PAC). Notre recherche est essentiellement basée sur une étude comparative des pays présentant de nombreuses similitudes mais aussi de réelles divergences quant au niveau de leur structure agraire. À travers des réformes mises en vigueur pendant et après la période d’adhésion en Pologne, on cherche à répondre à la question si les réformes appliquées en Pologne sont ou non transposables au cas de la Turquie
Poland and Turkey have been demonstrating for several years now a similar economic transition through a strong growth of GDP, a boost in exports and especially an increase in the flow of international capitals. Despite the economic transformation, the agricultural sector remains an important activity in their respective economies. Compared to other European countries, the large gap between the contribution of agriculture to GDP and the number of employees shows a very low productivity of labor. Agriculture is a main source of employment especially in the rural areas. Despite the steady decline in agricultural employment in recent years, the field is overpopulated and the hidden unemployment problem is conceals. Poland, a member of the European Union (EU) since May 2004, has greatly benefited from the Structural Funds to improve and modernize its agriculture. As for Turkey, an EU candidate since October 2005, it tries to adapt its agriculture to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Our research is mainly based on a comparative study of countries with many similarities but also real differences in the level of their agrarian structure. With the help of reforms that came into effect during and after the period of accession of Poland to the EU, we will try to find whether the reforms implemented in Poland are transferable or not to the case of Turkey

Over the last years, the growing availability of large datasets and the improvements in the computational speed of computers have further fostered the research in the fields of both macroeconomic modeling and forecasting analysis. A primary focus of these research areas is to improve the models performance by exploiting the informational content of several time series. Increasing the dimension of macro models is indeed crucial for a detailed structural understanding of the economic environment, as well as for an accurate forecasting analysis. As consequence, a new generation of large-scale macro models, based on the micro-foundations of a fully specified dynamic stochastic general equilibrium set-up, has became one of the most flourishing research areas of interest both in central banks and academia. At the same time, there has been a revival of forecasting methods dealing with many predictors, such as the factor models. The central idea of factor models is to exploit co-movements among variables through a parsimonious econometric structure. Few underlying common shocks or factors explain most of the co-variations among variables. The unexplained component of series movements is on the other hand due to pure idiosyncratic dynamics. The generality of their framework allows factor models to be suitable for describing a broad variety of models in a macroeconomic and a financial context. The revival of factor models, over the recent years, comes from important developments achieved by Stock and Watson (2002) and Forni, Hallin, Lippi and Reichlin (2000). These authors find the conditions under which some data averages become collinear to the space spanned by the factors when, the cross section dimension, becomes large. Moreover, their factor specifications allow the idiosyncratic dynamics to be mildly cross-correlated (an effect referred to as the 'approximate factor structure' by Chamberlain and Rothschild, 1983), a situation empirically verified in many applications. These findings have relevant implications. The most important being that the use of a large number of series is no longer representative of a dimensional constraint. On the other hand, it does help to identify the factor space. This new generation of factor models has been applied in several areas of macroeconomics and finance as well as for policy evaluation. It is consequently very likely to become a milestone in the literature of forecasting methods using many predictors. This thesis contributes to the empirical literature on factor models by proposing four original applications.

In the first chapter of this thesis, the generalized dynamic factor model of Forni et. al (2002) is employed to explore the predictive content of the asset returns in forecasting Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation and the growth rate of Industrial Production (IP). The connection between stock markets and economic growth is well known. In the fundamental valuation of equity, the stock price is equal to the discounted future streams of expected dividends. Since the future dividends are related to future growth, a revision of prices, and hence returns, should signal movements in the future growth path. Though other important transmission channels, such as the Tobin's q theory (Tobin, 1969), the wealth effect as well as capital market imperfections, have been widely studied in this literature. I show that an aggregate index, such as the S&P500, could be misleading if used as a proxy for the informative content of the stock market as a whole. Despite the widespread wisdom of considering such index as a leading variable, only part of the assets included in the composition of the index has a leading behaviour with respect to the variables of interest. Its forecasting performance might be poor, leading to sceptical conclusions about the effectiveness of asset prices in forecasting macroeconomic variables. The main idea of the first essay is therefore to analyze the lead-lag structure of the assets composing the S&P500. The classification in leading, lagging and coincident variables is achieved by means of the cross correlation function cleaned of idiosyncratic noise and short run fluctuations. I assume that asset returns follow a factor structure. That is, they are the sum of two parts: a common part driven by few shocks common to all the assets and an idiosyncratic part, which is rather asset specific. The correlation

function, computed on the common part of the series, is not affected by the assets' specific dynamics and should provide information only on the series driven by the same common factors. Once the leading series are identified, they are grouped within the economic sector they belong to. The predictive content that such aggregates have in forecasting IP growth and CPI inflation is then explored and compared with the forecasting power of the S&P500 composite index. The forecasting exercise is addressed in the following way: first, in an autoregressive (AR) model I choose the truncation lag that minimizes the Mean Square Forecast Error (MSFE) in 11 years out of sample simulations for 1, 6 and 12 steps ahead, both for the IP growth rate and the CPI inflation. Second, the S&P500 is added as an explanatory variable to the previous AR specification. I repeat the simulation exercise and find that there are very small improvements of the MSFE statistics. Third, averages of stock return leading series, in the respective sector, are added as additional explanatory variables in the benchmark regression. Remarkable improvements are achieved with respect to the benchmark specification especially for one year horizon forecast. Significant improvements are also achieved for the shorter forecast horizons, when the leading series of the technology and energy sectors are used.

The second chapter of this thesis disentangles the sources of aggregate risk and measures the extent of co-movements in five European stock markets. Based on the static factor model of Stock and Watson (2002), it proposes a new method for measuring the impact of international, national and industry-specific shocks. The process of European economic and monetary integration with the advent of the EMU has been a central issue for investors and policy makers. During these years, the number of studies on the integration and linkages among European stock markets has increased enormously. Given their forward looking nature, stock prices are considered a key variable to use for establishing the developments in the economic and financial markets. Therefore, measuring the extent of co-movements between European stock markets has became, especially over the last years, one of the main concerns both for policy makers, who want to best shape their policy responses, and for investors who need to adapt their hedging strategies to the new political and economic environment. An optimal portfolio allocation strategy is based on a timely identification of the factors affecting asset returns. So far, literature dating back to Solnik (1974) identifies national factors as the main contributors to the co-variations among stock returns, with the industry factors playing a marginal role. The increasing financial and economic integration over the past years, fostered by the decline of trade barriers and a greater policy coordination, should have strongly reduced the importance of national factors and increased the importance of global determinants, such as industry determinants. However, somehow puzzling, recent studies demonstrated that countries sources are still very important and generally more important of the industry ones. This paper tries to cast some light on these conflicting results. The chapter proposes an econometric estimation strategy more flexible and suitable to disentangle and measure the impact of global and country factors. Results point to a declining influence of national determinants and to an increasing influence of the industries ones. The international influences remains the most important driving forces of excess returns. These findings overturn the results in the literature and have important implications for strategic portfolio allocation policies; they need to be revisited and adapted to the changed financial and economic scenario.

The third chapter presents a new stylized fact which can be helpful for discriminating among alternative explanations of the U.S. macroeconomic stability. The main finding is that the fall in time series volatility is associated with a sizable decline, of the order of 30% on average, in the predictive accuracy of several widely used forecasting models, included the factor models proposed by Stock and Watson (2002). This pattern is not limited to the measures of inflation but also extends to several indicators of real economic activity and interest rates. The generalized fall in predictive ability after the mid-1980s is particularly pronounced for forecast horizons beyond one quarter. Furthermore, this empirical regularity is not simply specific to a single method, rather it is a common feature of all models including those used by public and private institutions. In particular, the forecasts for output and inflation of the Fed's Green book and the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) are significantly more accurate than a random walk only before 1985. After this date, in contrast, the hypothesis of equal predictive ability between naive random walk forecasts and the predictions of those institutions is not rejected for all horizons, the only exception being the current quarter. The results of this chapter may also be of interest for the empirical literature on asymmetric information. Romer and Romer (2000), for instance, consider a sample ending in the early 1990s and find that the Fed produced more accurate forecasts of inflation and output compared to several commercial providers. The results imply that the informational advantage of the Fed and those private forecasters is in fact limited to the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. In contrast, during the last two decades no forecasting model is better than "tossing a coin" beyond the first quarter horizon, thereby implying that on average uninformed economic agents can effectively anticipate future macroeconomics developments. On the other hand, econometric models and economists' judgement are quite helpful for the forecasts over the very short horizon, that is relevant for conjunctural analysis. Moreover, the literature on forecasting methods, recently surveyed by Stock and Watson (2005), has devoted a great deal of attention towards identifying the best model for predicting inflation and output. The majority of studies however are based on full-sample periods. The main findings in the chapter reveal that most of the full sample predictability of U.S. macroeconomic series arises from the years before 1985. Long time series appear

to attach a far larger weight on the earlier sub-sample, which is characterized by a larger volatility of inflation and output. Results also suggest that some caution should be used in evaluating the performance of alternative forecasting models on the basis of a pool of different sub-periods as full sample analysis are likely to miss parameter instability.

The fourth chapter performs a detailed forecast comparison between the static factor model of Stock and Watson (2002) (SW) and the dynamic factor model of Forni et. al. (2005) (FHLR). It is not the first work in performing such an evaluation. Boivin and Ng (2005) focus on a very similar problem, while Stock and Watson (2005) compare the performances of a larger class of predictors. The SW and FHLR methods essentially differ in the computation of the forecast of the common component. In particular, they differ in the estimation of the factor space and in the way projections onto this space are performed. In SW, the factors are estimated by static Principal Components (PC) of the sample covariance matrix and the forecast of the common component is simply the projection of the predicted variable on the factors. FHLR propose efficiency improvements in two directions. First, they estimate the common factors based on Generalized Principal Components (GPC) in which observations are weighted according to their signal to noise ratio. Second, they impose the constraints implied by the dynamic factors structure when the variables of interest are projected on the common factors. Specifically, they take into account the leading and lagging relations across series by means of principal components in the frequency domain. This allows for an efficient aggregation of variables that may be out of phase. Whether these efficiency improvements are helpful to forecast in a finite sample is however an empirical question. Literature has not yet reached a consensus. On the one hand, Stock and Watson (2005) show that both methods perform similarly (although they focus on the weighting of the idiosyncratic and not on the dynamic restrictions), while Boivin and Ng (2005) show that SW's method largely outperforms the FHLR's and, in particular, conjecture that the dynamic restrictions implied by the method are harmful for the forecast accuracy of the model. This chapter tries to shed some new light on these conflicting results. It

focuses on the Industrial Production index (IP) and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and bases the evaluation on a simulated out-of sample forecasting exercise. The data set, borrowed from Stock and Watson (2002), consists of 146 monthly observations for the US economy. The data spans from 1959 to 1999. In order to isolate and evaluate specific characteristics of the methods, a procedure, where the

two non-parametric approaches are nested in a common framework, is designed. In addition, for both versions of the factor model forecasts, the chapter studies the contribution of the idiosyncratic component to the forecast. Other non-core aspects of the model are also investigated: robustness with respect to the choice of the number of factors and variable transformations. Finally, the chapter performs a sub-sample performances of the factor based forecasts. The purpose of this exercise is to design an experiment for assessing the contribution of the core characteristics of different models to the forecasting performance and discussing auxiliary issues. Hopefully this may also serve as a guide for practitioners in the field. As in Stock and Watson (2005), results show that efficiency improvements due to the weighting of the idiosyncratic components do not lead to significant more accurate forecasts, but, in contrast to Boivin and Ng (2005), it is shown that the dynamic restrictions imposed by the procedure of Forni et al. (2005) are not harmful for predictability. The main conclusion is that the two methods have a similar performance and produce highly collinear forecasts.

Doctorat en sciences économiques, Orientation économie
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

碩士
淡江大學
歐洲研究所碩士班
99
For Africa, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP countries), the key point of national development and poverty eradication is agricultural development and the growth of agricultural trade. Most of ACP countries exports are concentrated on European Union (EU)’s agricultural market. Therefor, it is important to get Duty-Free & Quota-Free and trade related assistance from EU. EU and ACP countries signed Cotonou agreement in 2000. Cotonou agreement re-builds a new trade relationship and emphasizes reciprocal principle to foster ACP countries’ regional integration and gradual integration into the world economy. In order to create a new reciprocal trade regime, they commence Economic Patnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiation in 2002. EU commits to open residual market which is still protected under Lomé Convention and is concentrated on agricultural sector. On the other wise, ACP countries must engage in trade liberalization. However, EPAs negotiation doesn’t go successfully on schedule. ACP countries have different positions in EPAs negotiation which is result of the different levels of national development, acceptance for market openness and dependence on EU market. It is critical to open ACP market that will hurt ACP’s national development interest. Consequently, more than a half of ACP countries rejected to sign EPAs. At present, EU and ACP regions continue negotiating for the important issues of agriculture and development. Africa is the main agricultural region in ACP countries, this study therefore focuses on African ACP countries. In order to analyse the agricultural trade and development cooperation relationship between EU and ACP countries, it should study from three levels of African continent, region and country. The study shows that the effect of EPAs is limited because EPAs are lack of substantial commitment for trade related assistance and may hurt the process of ACP regional integration.

Defence date: 29 September 2008
Examining Board: Prof. Giovanni Federico (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Kiran K. Patel (European University Institute); Prof. Richard Griffiths (Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden); Prof. Johnny Laursen (Aarhus Universitet)
No abstract available

Defence date: 10 December 2001
Examining board: Prof. Richard T. Griffiths, Universiteit Leiden ; Prof. Jan van der Harst, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen ; Prof. Johnny N. Laursen, Aarhus Universitet ; Prof. Alan S. Milward, European University Institute (Supervisor)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 21 April 2001
Examining board: Prof. Francis Snyder (supervisor) ; Prof. Claude Blumann ; Prof. Louis Dubouis ; Prof. Jacques Ziller
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 20 November 1992
Examining board: Prof. T.C. Daintith (Institute of Advanced Studies, London) ; Prof. L. Lorvellec (Université de Nantes) ; Prof. Y. Mény (Institut d'Etudes Politique, Paris) ; Prof. F. Snyder (Institut universitaire européen, Florence) ; Dr. S. Ventura (Commission des Communauté européennes, Bruxelles)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 10 June 2005
Examining board: Prof. Andrew Webster (University of York) ; Prof. Donatella Della Porta (EUI) ; Prof. Klaus Eder (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, external co-supervisor) ; Prof. Colin Crouch (University of Warwick, former EUI, supervisor)
First made available online 31 August 2016
Ideas about public engagement with controversial technologies are growing in political prominence. This dissertation delivers a theoretically grounded, empirical analysis of why active public involvement is considered to be of growing importance for the legitimate use of new technologies. It examines the different social dynamics influencing actual attempts to engage the public and the difficulties encountered. Janus Hansen argues that while there are strong normative reasons to further public engagement with the regulation of controversial technologies, there are also strong sociological reasons to reflect carefully on what such engagement can realistically achieve. This dissertation delivers conceptual tools and empirical analyses to support such reflections based on in-depth case studies of important attempts to engage public concerns across Europe.