Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Crisi monetaria'

La tesi intende fornire un’analisi critica dello sviluppo dell’Unione Economica e Monetaria (UEM) alla luce della crisi del debito sovrano. A partire dal 2009 sono state progressivamente attuate diverse riforme che hanno limitato l’autonomia degli Stati Membri nell’esercizio delle loro prerogative sovrane ed hanno fornito alle istituzione europee nuovi poteri nell’ambito di diverse politiche. La ricerca investiga i trasferimenti di sovranità in corso dal livello nazionale a quello europeo focalizzandosi sulle trasformazioni sia dell’Unione Economica che di quella Monetaria. Nel primo capitolo la tesi analizza i carattere originali dell’UEM dalla sua creazione fino alla ratifica del trattato di Lisbona. Il secondo capitolo considera la creazione dei meccanismi di stabilizzazione introdotti per salvare i paesi a rischio default e garantire la stabilità finanziaria della zona euro nel suo complesso. Il terzo capitolo studia gli interventi della Banca Centrale Europea durante la crisi, analizzando in che modo la necessità di proteggere la moneta unica abbia sviluppato il ruolo della BCE ed esteso il suo mandato. Il quarto capitolo studia la riforma della governance economica tramite il rafforzamento della disciplina fiscale degli Stati Membri. Il quinto capitolo analizza la riforma della governance bancaria e la creazione dell’Unione Bancaria, che è stata finalmente introdotta per interrompere il circolo vizioso tra crisi del debito e crisi bancaria. Nello sviluppo della tesi le diverse riforme verranno analizzate dal punto di visto della loro legalità, efficacia e legittimità democratica.
The thesis aims to provide a critical analysis of the development of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the light of the sovereign debt crisis. Since 2009 a number of measures have been progressively implemented, which have limited the autonomy of Member States in exercising their sovereign prerogatives and have granted EU institutions new powers in key policy areas. The research will investigate the ongoing transfers of sovereignty from national to European level focusing on the transformation of both the Economic and the Monetary Union. In the first chapter, it will consider the original features of the EMU, from its introduction at the intergovernmental conference of Maastricht until the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The second chapter will focus on the creation of rescue and stabilization mechanisms put in place to save Member States from imminent default and to ensure the financial stability of the Eurozone as a whole. The third chapter will study the interventions of the European Central Bank during the crisis considering how the necessity to protect the single currency has developed its role and extended its mandate. The fourth chapter will focus on the reform of the economic governance through the fiscal discipline of Member States. The fifth chapter will take into consideration the reform of the banking governance and the establishment of the European Banking Union, which was finally introduced to stop the vicious cycle between the debt and banking crisis. By developing the thesis, the analysis will consider each reform from the point of view of its legality, effectiveness and democratic legitimacy.

La tesi intende fornire un’analisi critica dello sviluppo dell’Unione Economica e Monetaria (UEM) alla luce della crisi del debito sovrano. A partire dal 2009 sono state progressivamente attuate diverse riforme che hanno limitato l’autonomia degli Stati Membri nell’esercizio delle loro prerogative sovrane ed hanno fornito alle istituzione europee nuovi poteri nell’ambito di diverse politiche. La ricerca investiga i trasferimenti di sovranità in corso dal livello nazionale a quello europeo focalizzandosi sulle trasformazioni sia dell’Unione Economica che di quella Monetaria. Nel primo capitolo la tesi analizza i carattere originali dell’UEM dalla sua creazione fino alla ratifica del trattato di Lisbona. Il secondo capitolo considera la creazione dei meccanismi di stabilizzazione introdotti per salvare i paesi a rischio default e garantire la stabilità finanziaria della zona euro nel suo complesso. Il terzo capitolo studia gli interventi della Banca Centrale Europea durante la crisi, analizzando in che modo la necessità di proteggere la moneta unica abbia sviluppato il ruolo della BCE ed esteso il suo mandato. Il quarto capitolo studia la riforma della governance economica tramite il rafforzamento della disciplina fiscale degli Stati Membri. Il quinto capitolo analizza la riforma della governance bancaria e la creazione dell’Unione Bancaria, che è stata finalmente introdotta per interrompere il circolo vizioso tra crisi del debito e crisi bancaria. Nello sviluppo della tesi le diverse riforme verranno analizzate dal punto di visto della loro legalità, efficacia e legittimità democratica.
The thesis aims to provide a critical analysis of the development of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the light of the sovereign debt crisis. Since 2009 a number of measures have been progressively implemented, which have limited the autonomy of Member States in exercising their sovereign prerogatives and have granted EU institutions new powers in key policy areas. The research will investigate the ongoing transfers of sovereignty from national to European level focusing on the transformation of both the Economic and the Monetary Union. In the first chapter, it will consider the original features of the EMU, from its introduction at the intergovernmental conference of Maastricht until the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The second chapter will focus on the creation of rescue and stabilization mechanisms put in place to save Member States from imminent default and to ensure the financial stability of the Eurozone as a whole. The third chapter will study the interventions of the European Central Bank during the crisis considering how the necessity to protect the single currency has developed its role and extended its mandate. The fourth chapter will focus on the reform of the economic governance through the fiscal discipline of Member States. The fifth chapter will take into consideration the reform of the banking governance and the establishment of the European Banking Union, which was finally introduced to stop the vicious cycle between the debt and banking crisis. By developing the thesis, the analysis will consider each reform from the point of view of its legality, effectiveness and democratic legitimacy.

Lo scopo della ricerca è l'analisi comparativa delle politiche monetarie di Giappone e Unione Europea a partire dal 2013, ovvero rispettivamente dall'insediamento del governo Abe e di Mario Draghi come governatore della Banca Centrale Europea. L'analisi è finalizzata alla ricerca di somiglianze e differenze nell'implementazione della politica monetaria tra due sistemi economici diversi per struttura, ma simili per quanto riguarda i sintomi di malessere economico. La ricerca tenterà appunto di comprendere se e fino a che punto la politica monetaria possa risolvere i problemi dei due sistemi economici. Il lavoro è diviso in tre parti. Nella prima parte, puramente teorica, si farà una panoramica delle scuole di pensiero economico che hanno esercitato un'influenza sulla conduzione della politica monetaria in generale. Si analizzeranno poi il ruolo della Banca Centrale e i meccanismi di trasmissione della politica monetaria. La seconda parte invece è puramente empirica e consiste nell'elaborazione e analisi delle politiche monetarie dei due paesi anno per anno a partire dal 2013. La terza parte funge da conclusione: si opererà un confronto tra i due sistemi e tra i risultati ottenuti nella seconda parte e il quadro teorico di riferimento analizzato nella prima.Fatto ciò si risponderà alla domanda posta all'inizio dell'elaborato: può, e se sì fino a che punto, la politica monetaria risolvere i problemi di Giappone ed Unione Europea?

The 2007-2008 financial crisis: selective cross-sector bailouts and the need of a new regulatory and supervisory approach (subprime crisis). Systemic risk: traditional views and a new perspective. Supervision of Systemically Relevant financial Institutions.

La seguente tesi e’ costituita da tre diversi elaborati, il primo e’ l’estensione di un modello di equilibrio generale a due regioni (Benigno JIE 2004) con l’intento di calcolare i pesi ottimali per l’inflazione dell’area euro utilizzando micro dati sull’eterogeneità delle rigidità dei prezzi in Europa. Il secondo e il terzo elaborato si focalizzano invece sulle crisi d’insolvenza con l’obiettivo di selezionare le variabili che forniscono maggiori informazioni per la previsione della crisi. La metodologia utilizzata e’ l’analisi della transvariazione. Mentre il secondo ‘essay’ si concentra sulla versione univariata, il terzo estende la metodologia al caso multivariato. Il primo analizza le crisi d’insolvenza più severe degli anni ’90, la seconda utilizza invece gli episodi di crisi analizzati da Frankel e Rose (1996).
The present work is made of three different essays, the first is an extension of a two region general equilibrium model (Benigno JIE 2004), with the intent of calculating optimal weights for EU inflation using micro data on the level of price rigidities, the second and the third have as main focus financial and currency country crises, with the task of selecting the most important variables in terms of crisis prediction by means of a descriptive statistics methodology called transvariation analysis. While the second essay focuses on univariate transvariation, the third extends the methodology to a multivariate framework. The last two essays are based on two different datasets. The first studies the most recent deep financial crises of the 1990s and the source is IMF, International Financial Statistics, the second uses a vast sample of currency crisis episodes taken from Frankel and Rose (1996) dataset made of annual data on more than one hundred developed countries from 1971 through 1992 and defining currency crash as a large change of nominal exchange rate that is also a substantial increase in the rate of change of nominal depreciation. The source in this case is World Bank, World Development Indicators.

La seguente tesi e’ costituita da tre diversi elaborati, il primo e’ l’estensione di un modello di equilibrio generale a due regioni (Benigno JIE 2004) con l’intento di calcolare i pesi ottimali per l’inflazione dell’area euro utilizzando micro dati sull’eterogeneità delle rigidità dei prezzi in Europa. Il secondo e il terzo elaborato si focalizzano invece sulle crisi d’insolvenza con l’obiettivo di selezionare le variabili che forniscono maggiori informazioni per la previsione della crisi. La metodologia utilizzata e’ l’analisi della transvariazione. Mentre il secondo ‘essay’ si concentra sulla versione univariata, il terzo estende la metodologia al caso multivariato. Il primo analizza le crisi d’insolvenza più severe degli anni ’90, la seconda utilizza invece gli episodi di crisi analizzati da Frankel e Rose (1996).
The present work is made of three different essays, the first is an extension of a two region general equilibrium model (Benigno JIE 2004), with the intent of calculating optimal weights for EU inflation using micro data on the level of price rigidities, the second and the third have as main focus financial and currency country crises, with the task of selecting the most important variables in terms of crisis prediction by means of a descriptive statistics methodology called transvariation analysis. While the second essay focuses on univariate transvariation, the third extends the methodology to a multivariate framework. The last two essays are based on two different datasets. The first studies the most recent deep financial crises of the 1990s and the source is IMF, International Financial Statistics, the second uses a vast sample of currency crisis episodes taken from Frankel and Rose (1996) dataset made of annual data on more than one hundred developed countries from 1971 through 1992 and defining currency crash as a large change of nominal exchange rate that is also a substantial increase in the rate of change of nominal depreciation. The source in this case is World Bank, World Development Indicators.

La mia tesi di dottorato consiste di tre articoli empirici sul mercato interbancario europeo non collateralizzato e il suo funzionamento durante la crisi finanziaria del 2007-2008. Il primo articolo, intitolato “Il funzionamento del mercato interbancario europeo durante la crisi finanziaria del 2007-2008”1 fornisce un’analisi dettagliata del funzionamento del mercato interbancario europeo dei prestiti non collateralizzati con scadenza overnight (O/N) durante la crisi finanziaria del 2007-2008, studiando le serie storiche dei tassi di interesse, del turnover del mercato, e dei costi di indebitamento delle banche. Lo scopo è cercare di distinguere l’impatto degli eventi di mercato – sin dall’inizio delle tensioni nell’estate del 2007 fino alla fine di novembre 2008 – da pattern stagionali, dinamiche regolari determinate dalla cornice istituzionale dell’operatività dell’Eurosistema, dall’impatto degli interventi eccezionali intrapresi dalla Banca Centrale Europea (BCE) durante la crisi. I risultati mostrano il ruolo importante, accanto agli eventi di mercato, della liquidità addizionale fornita dalla BCE e dell’accresciuta tendenza delle istituzioni finanziarie a trattenere la liquidità in eccesso piuttosto che scambiarla sul mercato interbancario. L’aumento del rischio di controparte e fattori stagionali sono importanti determinanti dei tassi d’interesse e dei volumi O/N; la fornitura eccezionale di liquidità da parte dell’Eurosistema e i notevoli cambiamenti alla cornice istituzionale di implementazione della politica monetaria hanno influenzato gli incentivi delle banche a scambiare liquidità nel mercato. L’analisi dei tassi di interesse pagati dalle singole banche per i prestiti non collateralizzati documenta il ruolo chiave della reputazione al fine di ottenere migliori condizioni di funding e, durante la crisi, mostra un ripiegamento verso controparti nazionali e la garanzia implicita goduta dalle banche con i maggiori volumi d’affari di essere “too-big-to-fail”. Il secondo articolo, intitolato “La microstruttura del mercato monetario prima e dopo la crisi finanziaria: una prospettiva di rete”2, fornisce una dettagliata analisi sulla microstruttura del mercato monetario europeo secondo l’approccio della teoria delle reti. Le banche sono i nodi delle reti; i prestiti overnight non collateralizzati formano i link che connettono i nodi. L’analisi statica degli indicatori di rete conferma molti fatti stilizzati verificati per altri sistemi complessi: le reti interbancarie sono molto sparse – lungi dall’essere complete – esibiscono la proprietà “small world” e una distribuzione del grado (il numero di controparti con cui ogni banca stabilisce dei link) che segue una legge esponenziale. D’altra parte la tendenza della banche al clustering, cioè a formare gruppi dove i link sono relativamente più densi, è molto più bassa rispetto ad altri sistemi reali. L’analisi della topologia delle reti prima versus dopo l’inizio della crisi fornisce intuizioni interessanti sul potenziale per il contagio finanziario; la partizione delle reti in diverse sotto-reti più piccole e internamente connesse documenta un movimento contro l’integrazione del mercato; pattern eterogenei degli indicatori per banche che hanno dimensioni diverse offrono intuizioni sul loro comportamento. Infine, 1 CEIS Working Paper No. 158 (December 2009). Submitted to the International Journal of Central Banking. 2 CEIS Working Paper No. 181 (January 2011). l’analisi degli indicatori di centralità di rete indica chiaramente che le banche più grandi sono anche le più centrali/influenti nel sistema prima della crisi. Questo cambia dopo Agosto 2007, quando le banche di medie dimensioni e quelle molto piccolo gradualmente aumentano la loro influenza nel mercato come prestatori di liquidità. Il terzo articolo, intitolato “Too-connected versus too-big-to-fail: la centralità di rete delle banche e i tassi di interesse overnight”3 studia cosa determina i costi di indebitamento delle banche nel mercato monetario non collateralizzato. L’obiettivo è testare se misure di centralità, che quantificano gli effetti di rete dovuti alle interazioni tra le banche nel mercato, possono aiutare a spiegare i pattern eterogenei nei tassi di interesse pagati per prendere a prestito fondi non collateralizzati una volta che si controlla per la dimensione della banca e per altri fattori specifici di ogni banca e del mercato. Evidenza preliminare mostra che le banche grandi si indebitano in media a tassi migliori rispetto alle istituzioni più piccole, sia prima che dopo l’inizio della crisi finanziaria. Tuttavia, controllando per la dimensione, le misure di centralità riescono a catturare parte della variazione cross-section nei tassi overnight. Più in particolare: (1) Prima dell’inizio della crisi tutte le banche, indipendentemente dalla loro dimensione, beneficiano di forme diverse di interconnessione, ma l’effetto è piccolo in termini economici. La reputazione della banca e il rischio di controparte sono i fattori più rilevanti per ridurre i tassi d’interesse medi giornalieri. Le banche straniere prendono a prestito a sconto rispetto a quelle italiane. (2) Dopo Agosto 2007 l’impatto della centralità delle banche diventa più forte ma assume segno opposto: la “ricompensa” derivante da una maggiore interconnessione diventa una “punizione”, segnale questo forse di disciplina di mercato. La reputazione della banca diventa ancora più importante. (3) Dopo la bancarotta di Lehman l’effetto della centralità sullo spread mantiene lo stesso segno che aveva dopo Agosto 2007, ma la sua dimensione economica è notevolmente più grande. Le banche straniere pagano un premio significativo rispetto a quelle Italiane; la reputazione diventa estremamente più importante rispetto a prima della crisi.
My doctoral thesis consists of three empirical papers on the unsecured euro money market and its functioning during the 2007-2008 financial crisis. The first paper, titled “The functioning of the European interbank market during the 2007-2008 financial crisis”1 provides a detailed analysis of the functioning of the overnight (O/N) unsecured euro money market during the 2007-2008 financial crisis by looking at the time patterns of interest rates, market turnover and banks’ borrowing costs. The aim is to disentangle the impact of market events – since the outbreak of tensions in the summer of 2007 until the end of November 2008 – from seasonal patterns of market activity, movements determined by the Eurosystem’s operational framework, the impact of the ECB’s exceptional crisis-related interventions. The results show the important role, alongside market events, of the additional refinancing provided by the ECB and of credit institutions’ increased tendency to hoard surplus reserves rather than trading them in the secondary market. Higher counterparty credit risk and seasonal factors are important determinants of O/N rates and volumes; the exceptional provision of liquidity by the Eurosystem and the relevant changes to the operational framework have influenced banks’ incentives to trade liquidity in the market. The analysis of banks’ costs for uncollateralised loans provides evidence of the major role of bank reputation to obtain better funding and, during the crisis, of a retreat towards national counterparties and of a too-big-to-fail guarantee implicitly granted to the banks with the highest volumes of business. The second paper, titled “The microstructure of the money market before and after the financial crisis: a network perspective”2, provides a detailed microstructure analysis of the euro money market by taking a network perspective. Banks are the nodes of the networks; overnight unsecured loans form the links connecting the nodes. The static analysis of network indicators confirms a number of stylised facts verified for other real complex systems: interbank networks are highly sparse, far from being complete, exhibit the small world property and a power-law distribution of degree (the number of counterparties each bank establishes links with). On the other hand the tendency of banks to cluster, i.e. to form groups where links are relatively denser, is much lower than in other real systems. The analysis of the topology before versus after the start of the crisis provides interesting insights into the potential for financial contagion; the partition of the network into several smaller sub-networks documents a move against market integration; heterogeneous patterns of indicators across banks of different size offer insights into banks’ behaviour. Finally, the analysis of network centrality indicates unambiguously that the biggest banks are also the most central/influent in the system before the onset of the crisis. Things change after August 2007 since medium-sized and very small banks progressively increase their influence in the market as liquidity providers. 1 CEIS Working Paper No. 158 (December 2009). Submitted to the International Journal of Central Banking. 2 CEIS Working Paper No. 181 (January 2011). The last paper, titled “Too-connected versus too-big-to-fail: banks’ network centrality and overnight interest rates”3 aims at studying what influences banks’ borrowing costs in the unsecured euro money market. The objective is to test whether measures of centrality, quantifying network effects due to interactions among banks in the market, can help explain heterogeneous patterns in the interest rates paid to borrow unsecured funds once bank size and other bank and market factors that affect the overnight segment are controlled for. Preliminary evidence shows that large banks borrow on average at better rates compared to smaller institutions, both before and after the start of the financial crisis. Nonetheless, controlling for size, centrality measures can capture part of the cross-sectional variation in overnight rates. More specifically: (1) Before the start of the crisis all the banks, independently of their size, profit from different forms of interconnectedness, but the economic size of the effect is small. Bank reputation and perceived credit riskiness are the most relevant factors to reduce average daily interest rates. Foreign banks borrow at a discount over Italian ones. (2) After August 2007 the impact of banks’ interconnectedness becomes larger but changes sign: the “reward” stemming from a higher centrality becomes a “punishment”, which possibly reflects market discipline. Bank reputation becomes even more important. (3) After Lehman’s bankruptcy the effect of centrality on the spread maintains the same sign as after August 2007, but the magnitude increases remarkably. Foreign banks borrow at a relevant premium over Italian ones; reputation becomes outstandingly more important than in normal times.

In the first chapter, I examine both theoretically and empirically how income uncertainty affects the effectiveness of monetary policy. I consider income risk from potential unemployment, and find that monetary policy has a smaller influence on aggregate demand when unemployment risk is high. I build on the fact that saving arising from a precautionary motive has a smaller interest elasticity. As a consequence, aggregate demand reacts less to the interest rate when uncertainty is high. The second chapter links the build-up of financial risk that led to the recent financial crisis to the preceding period of exceptionally low macroeconomic volatility. The degree of stability that a country has enjoyed before 2007 predicts robustly how much it suffered from the crisis, a result that also holds for individual firms. In the final chapter, I connect this period of low volatility to the conduct of monetary policy. Building on a stylized model, I show empirically that monetary policy may have been `too successful' in stabilizing inflation, as this has contributed to excessive financial risk taking.
En el primer capítol, aquesta Tesi Doctoral estudia com la incertesa en els ingressos afecta l'eficàcia de les polítiques monetàries. Considerant el risc en els ingressos de la desocupació potencial, la investigació conclou que les polítiques monetàries tenen una influència menor en la demanda agregada quan el risc de desocupació és elevat. Parteixo del fet que l’estalvi sorgit de motius preventius té una menor elasticitat respecte el tipus d'interès. Com a conseqüència, la demanda agregada reacciona menys als tipus d’interès quan la incertesa és alta. En el segon capítol s’enllaça el risc financer que va precedir la crisi financera recent amb el període precedent caracteritzat per una volatilitat macroeconòmica baixa. El grau d’estabilitat que un país va gaudir abans del 2007 prediu de forma robusta el grau en què va patir durant la crisi econòmica, un resultat que també es manté quan s’analitzen les empreses. En l’últim capítol de la Tesi, connecto aquest període de volatilitat baixa amb la manera en què s’han desenvolupat les polítiques monetàries. A través d’un model, mostro com les polítiques monetàries han estat massa “exitoses” en estabilitzar la inflació, la qual cosa ha contribuït en una excessiva aversió al risc financer.

PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO
COORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DO PESSOAL DE ENSINO SUPERIOR
PROGRAMA DE SUPORTE À PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO DE INSTS. DE ENSINO
Neste trabalho analisamos a política monetária brasileira em relação a um grupo de países que seguem o regime de metas para a inflação. Nossos resultados indicam que muitos países tiveram mudanças na política monetária, detectadas através de uma quebra na função de reação empírica dos bancos centrais, no período entre 2007 e 2009, possivelmente relacionadas com a crise financeira global. Encontramos evidências que o banco central brasileiro reduziu sua resposta aos desvios da inflação em relação à meta após esta mudança e também que as expectativas de inflação ficaram desancoradas, sugerindo uma inconsistência com o regime de metas para inflação. Apesar de termos detectado quebras na maioria dos países que seguem o regime de metas, as duas mudanças acima não ocorreram na maior parte dos países. Desta forma, utilizamos esses países para aplicar o método do controle sintético e estimar qual seria a trajetória da taxa de inflação e crescimento do PIB, caso não tivesse ocorrido tal mudança na política monetária brasileira. Os resultados do método do controle sintético sugerem que a mudança na política monetária brasileira resultou em uma taxa de inflação notavelmente maior em relação à trajetória sintética, ou seja, a inflação caso não tivesse ocorrida a mudança na política monetária; e um crescimento do PIB mais volátil, com ganhos limitados no período após a mudança e um crescimento menor nos anos seguintes, comparativamente à trajetória sintética do crescimento do PIB.
In this dissertation, we analyze the Brazilian monetary policy and a group of countries under inflation targeting. Our results indicate that many countries had changes in monetary policy, detected through a break in the central bank reaction function between 2007 and 2009, possibly related to the global financial crisis. We find evidence that the Brazilian central bank lowered its response to inflation deviations from the target and also that inflation expectations became unanchored, suggesting an inconsistency with the inflation targeting regime. Although we detected breaks in almost every country, the two above changes did not occur in most of the countries. Thus, we used these countries to apply the synthetic control method and estimate the trajectory of inflation and GDP growth if the Brazilian central bank had not changed its monetary policy. The results of the synthetic control method suggest that the change in the Brazilian monetary policy resulted in higher inflation and a more volatile GDP dynamic, with limited gains in the period after the change and lower growth in the following years, compared to the synthetic trajectory.

As the effects of the crisis became more and more evident, some nations began to show signs of economic decline and some of them started to think about abandoning Euro. Many economists argued that such a proposal was pure mad-ness, stupid and inconvenient if implemented. However, this idea increasingly began to attract attention over time. Numerous hasty and superficial analysis on the use started to flock, stimulating the spread of further opinions and publica-tions. The debate began to deepen and the contrast between the two schools of economic thought (the orthodox and the heterodox neo-classical post-Keynesian) has reinvigorated. The awareness about the seriousness of the matter, though, arose in England in 2011 when a competition with a prize of 250 thousand pounds was organized. The Wolfson prize was awarded to the best piece of aca-demic work which could provide a sensible answer to the question: “If member states leave the Economic and Monetary Union, what is the best way for the eco-nomic process to be managed to provide the soundest foundation for the future growth and prosperity of the current membership?”. The contest was won by Roger Bootle, with his “Leaving the Euro: a practical guide” which will be dis-cussed in the last chapter. This thesis analyses the global financial and economic crisis from its origins en-tailed in the excesses of Wall Street, until the imbalances in Europe, through the opinions and studies of internationally renowned economists belonging to both schools of economic thought. Particular attention has been given to the economic policies of austerity in Europe and the main macroeconomic effects that these re-strictive policies have had on the member states restrictions, especially on pe-ripheral countries. Consequently the focus will shifts to the Modern Monetary Theory as a theoretical alternative to interpret the reasons for the imbalances in the Euro area. The cen-tral aspect of this theory is the different interpretation of the deficit of the govern-ment budget on the basis of sectorial balance sheets and their mechanism of supporting the economy in the downturn. To conclude, referring to the paper that won the Wolfson prize in 2011 a potential exit strategy with a main focus on Italy is described, addressing the more relevant legal and economic issues. As for economic aspects, a comparison is performed to determine which option was the best among the potential solutions to a long period of austerity or the ordered abandonment of the Euro. Finally, several probable drawbacks are listed that should give pause to the countries in question before making such a drastic choice.

The Global Financial Crisis has been one of the most significant economic shocks since the Great Depression. As the Crisis intensified, there was a large fall in markets’ capacity to accept risk. The result was a situation of tight credit conditions and in some cases dysfunctional markets, accompanied by a general loss of confidence. This dissertation explores some of the forces that have been working to mitigate the negative effects in the aftermath of the Crisis. The first chapter analyses the role played by central bank forwardlooking communication in shaping markets’ expectation. To this aim, we propose a new index of central bank’s verbal guidance, which measures the communication about future based on the frequency of future verbs in monetary policy statements. The purpose is to test whether and the extent to which verbal guidance might be considered an additional policy instrument. We consider the case of the European Central Bank (ECB) and follow a two-steps procedure. First, we analyze the main determinants of our index and estimate the unexpected component. Second, we investigate the effects of the identified innovation of verbal guidance on daily changes of forward money markets rates between September 2007 and December 2015. Our results show that financial markets’ expectations on future short-term interest rates react to a shock of communication about future: the effect is negative and larger for higher horizons, after controlling for the standard policy rate shock and the announcement of unconventional monetary policies. This suggests that the verbal guidance may be considered an additional policy instrument. The second chapter provides evidence about the tightening credit conditions faced by the private sector in Italy in the aftermath of the Global Crisis and analyses the role played by social capital. Since social capital is a key determinant of trust, it should positively affects the supply of credit, in particular during crises when confidence is under stress, as it was for the financial turmoil of 2008. To investigate whether and the extent to which social capital mitigated the credit rationing following the Crisis, we compare the probability of approving a loan requests lodged by over half a million Italian non-financial corporations before and after the default of Lehman Brothers (from January 2007 to June 2010). We find that firms headquartered in high-social capital provinces suffered less: while during the Crisis the probability of loan approval declined for all firms, for those ones headquartered in high-social-capital areas the decline was half that of low-social-capital areas, indicating that social capital smoothed the impact of the shock. Moreover, consistent with theory, we find that social capital conveys its mitigating effect on credit rationing in cases in which the reciprocal trust, because of the lack of information, matters more.

Seminario para optar al grado de Ingeniero Comercial, Mención Economía
El presente trabajo tiene por finalidad abordar la crisis Europea desde la perspectiva de la teoría de la zona monetaria óptima. Por lo tanto, se presenta una revisión histórica de la bibliografía de las zonas monetarias óptimas, tanto teórica como empírica. Hare referencia al trabajo de Rudi Dornbusch (2001) el cual es una defensa de las uniones monetarias, para demostrar tanto desde la teoría como de los sucesos de la actual crisis Europea que el problema de la definición de una zona monetaria óptima, como el análisis costos/beneficio de la decisión de pertenecer, no es trivial. Esto dará paso a una reflexión en cuanto al alcance de la teoría y las aproximaciones empíricas al problema. Por último se concluye que el problema es de amplio espectro, y que la falta de consenso teórica complica las aproximaciones empíricas. Además, el problema es en definitiva un problema político y por lo tanto debe ser entendido como tal.

The Great Recession is the manifestation of some fundamental problems in the real sector of the global economy, related basically to the loss of competitiveness of the U.S. and other central economies, reflected in continuous external disequilibria in the form of parallel current account deficits and financial account surpluses. Domestic monetary and fiscal (or domestic adjustment) policies have not reached a solution to the problem because we are now dealing with a global problem that requires multilateral solutions seeking to adjust some fundamental relative prices and the closing of some key structural imbalances in order to make a sustainable recovery possible. Besides, the difficulties in finding and engineering a solution show the need to reassess the theoretical paradigms underlying the economic policies that preceded the current crisis (e.g., supply-side economics).
La Gran Recesión es la manifestación de ciertos problemas fundamentales en el sector real dela economía global, relacionados básicamente con la pérdida de competitividad de los Estados Unidos y otras economías centrales, y que se han reflejado en sucesivos desequilibrios externos en la forma de paralelos déficits en cuenta corriente y superávits en cuenta financiera. Las actuales políticas de ajuste doméstico no están funcionando porque se trata de un problema global que requiere de soluciones globales que permitan el ajuste de ciertos precios relativos fundamentales y la reversión de algunos desequilibrios estructurales básicos, a fin de hacer posible una recupe- ración sostenible. Además, las dificultades para encontrar una solución muestran la necesidad de reevaluar los paradigmas teóricos que sirvieron de base a las políticas económicas previas a la crisis actual (por ejemplo, supply-side economics).

The main focus of this PhD thesis is to investigate the unconventional monetary policy tools introduced by the Bank of England (BoE) in its response to the recent financial crisis and to analyse its impact on the UK economy and especially the banking sector. The thesis consists of four chapters; an introductory chapter and three self-contained chapters. The first chapter mainly inspects the types and the sizes of the unconventional interventions of the monetary authorities in the UK, the US, and the EU after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. It also describes the transmission channels through which the impact of the unconventional monetary policies is delivered into the wide economy, and includes a survey of the literature of quantitative easing. The second chapter employs a flow of funds (FOFs) analysis based on Godley and Lavoie (2007) balance sheet framework using ONS sectoral data for the period between 2007 and 2011. It focuses on two distinct sub-periods (2007-2008 and 2009-2011) to assess the initial effects of mid-2007 financial crisis on the UK economy and examine the influence of BoE’s asset purchase program (APP) on the sectoral financial positions in the main financial asset categories. The analysis implicates five main results. First, APP was unsuccessful in expanding bank lending which dropped by about £208 billion in the 2009-2011 period. Second, APP might have positive effects on debt securities and equity prices and hence consumer wealth. Third, through reducing the cost of borrowing, it appears that APP induced the majority of sectors to issue more debt securities. Fourth, after the introduction of APP early in 2009, several sectors relied more on equity rather than debt capital. Finally, domestic productive sectors (NFCs, MFIs, OFIs, and INSs) showed some abroad bias and sent massive amounts of money out of the country. The third chapter explains the drop in total bank lending after the introduction of APP from an agent-based computational economics (ACE) point of view. The baseline model contains four types of agents -households (HHs), big firms (BFs), small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and banks-. These agents interact monthly for a period of 50 months in an environment that simulates bank lending markets in the UK after APP was introduced in 2009. The ACE model is anchored to the actual values of several variables -such as homeownership statistics and nonfinancial firms leverage ratio- around the time of the program initiation. The lower bond yields caused by APP encourage BFs to substitute bank borrowing with security debt (bonds). In addition, the risk weight regime of Basel capital adequacy requirements induces banks to favour mortgages over business loans to SMEs. My analysis contrasts the implications on bank behaviour of Basel III capital adequacy requirements (scenario 3) with Basel I (simple capital adequacy requirements with no risk weights) and the case of no capital requirements (scenarios 1 and 2 respectively). The scenario analysis shows that in the absence of risk weighting (i.e. scenarios 1 and 2), both lending to SMEs and total lending would have been higher. The combination of lower bond yields and Basel III capital adequacy requirements on banks appears to play a role in the drop in the amount of bank loans to businesses. Similar to the actual data, simulation results indicate that the rise in the amount of mortgages was not enough to counter the decrease in business loans which represents the main cause of the shrinkage in total bank lending. The fourth chapter tries to analyse the same issue of falling bank lending after APP introduction using a three-sector DSGE model. The main results show that a negative shock in gilts yield -initiated by massive asset purchases under the program- induces big unrestricted firms to shift from bank borrowing to security debt (bonds). The fall in BFs bank borrowing decreases the share of the loans to BFs in banks asset compositions and hence increases the amount of risk weighted assets. Induced by Basel III capital requirements, banks start to adjust their portfolios to accommodate more mortgages and less loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The analysis of the role of capital adequacy requirements points out that while the introduction of strong enough capital requirements decreases the risks in the banking system, it may deprive the bank financing from SMEs.

In Chapter 1 I brie y introduce the issues that will be studied in Chapter 2 and 3. In Chapter 2 I introduce a macroprudential policy for the cap on debt-to-income (DTI) ratio in a model which is estimated over the period of the build-up of household debt occurred in US before the financial crisis. The optimal macroprudential policy requires a more important role for labor income in credit supply decision and a strong countercyclical response of the cap on DTI to household debt. I find that this optimal macroprudential policy is successful in stabilizing household debt, is beneficial in terms of social welfare and is desirable as a complement for monetary policy, when this is enforced as a standard Taylor rule. I then consider also a monetary policy that can "lean against the wind" of a credit boom to pursue financial stability. It turns out that this policy is welfare-dominated by the strategy of assigning this goal to a macroprudential authority committing to optimally implementing the cap on DTI. However, the best-performing policy is a combination of "leaning against the wind" strategy and macroprudential policy. In Chapter 3 I study optimal government spending and monetary policy in an economy hit by a liquidity shock, which may generate recession and de ation. I find that the optimal policy mix implies a money-financed fiscal stimulus, which is shaped as a one-period countercyclical fiscal stimulus along with a prolonged central bank's balance-sheet expansion. By comparing this optimal policy with other suboptimal policies we uncover several facts. First, an unconventional monetary policy performs unambiguously better when accompanied by a fiscal stimulus. Second, financing the stimulus with only public debt brings about long-lasting recession and de ation. Third, "active" monetary policies, like the standard Taylor rule, "in ation targeting" and "nominal GDP targeting" are efficient policies if the increase in money supply brought about by these policies is complemented with an optimal fiscal stimulus.

Esta dissertação possui como objetivo entender as principais diferenças de duas uniões monetárias, e assim compreender quais são os impactos da estrutura institucional sobre o crescimento e desenvolvimento econômico dos países membros e/ou estados membros das uniões monetárias. Especificamente, foca nas estruturas institucionais da União Europeia e da União Federalista dos Estados Unidos. Para tal, o trabalho apresenta os diferentes arcabouços institucionais da União Europeia e da União Federalista dos EUA e faz uma análise comparativa entre eles. O método escolhido para tal foi de analise descritiva das experiências da União Monetária Europeia em comparação a União Federativa dos Estados Unidos. Neste sentido, dividiu-se a dissertação em cinco capítulos, incluindo o capítulo introdutório e as considerações finais. No capítulo 2, “Integração Econômica”, realiza-se uma revisão da teoria sobre áreas monetárias ótimas e federalismo fiscal. O intuito deste capítulo é a compreensão teórica para a análise dos capítulos seguintes. No capítulo 3, “Uniões Monetárias”, analisa-se a experiência da União Monetária Europeia, apresentando os principais desdobramentos de sua criação e o desempenho macroeconômico ao longo dos dezessete anos de existência, destacando a crise vivida pela zona do euro. A experiência da União Federalista dos Estados Unidos é analisada de forma comparativa com a União Europeia no capítulo 4, “Análise Comparativa”, bem como seus arranjos institucionais. Por fim, nas considerações finais, são apresentadas as reflexões do trabalho. Em geral, as diferenças encontradas nos arranjos institucionais das duas uniões monetárias estudadas justificam os principais impulsionadores das desigualdades no desempenho econômico das mesmas.
The aim of this study is to understand the main differences of two monetary unions, and thus understand what the impacts of the institutional framework for economic growth and development of member countries and/or member states of monetary unions. In particular, it analyses the institutional structures of the European Union and the United States Union. For this, the work presents a revision the different institutional frameworks of the EU and the US and makes a comparative analysis between them. The method chosen for this purpose was a descriptive analysis of the experiences of the European Monetary Union in comparison with of the Federal Union of the United States. In this sense, it divided the work into five chapters, including a brief introduction chapter and the conclusion. In Chapter 2, "Economic Integration", it is carried out a review of the theory of Optimum Currency Areas (OCA) and fiscal federalism. The purpose of this chapter is the theoretical understanding for the analysis of the following chapters. In Chapter 3, "Monetary Unions", it is analysed the experience of the European Monetary Union, with the main consequences of its creation and macroeconomic performance over the seventeen years of existence, highlighting the crisis of the euro zone. The experience of the US Federalist Union is analysed in comparison with the European Union in Chapter 4, "Comparative Analysis", and its institutional arrangements. Finally, the final remarks, presents the reflections of this work. Overall, the differences in the institutional arrangements of the two studied monetary unions justify the main drivers of inequalities in economic performance both of them.

Esta tesis pretende dar respuesta a la crisis del euro y a las contradicciones que genera su gestión, partiendo de la premisa de que para asegurar la sostenibilidad de la moneda única es preciso consolidar la reforma federal que, según concluimos en la investigación, ya se ha emprendido. En esta investigación se valora hasta qué punto la eurocrisis impulsa la reforma política, analizando el contexto en que se ha desarrollado la Unión Económica y Monetaria (UEM). Asimismo, se establece una justificación normativa del federalismo, de forma que éste es un marco teórico sustantivo, que nos permite valorar el funcionamiento de las instituciones y las leyes de la Unión Europea en su conjunto, y de la UEM, en particular. El análisis diacrónico de la integración nos permite establecer que existe ya un proceso de federalización en marcha, aunque con algunas lagunas, que también constituyen el núcleo del análisis. Habiendo establecido un diagnóstico sobre las carencias de la UEM, que, lejos de convertirse en una zona monetaria óptima, incluso ha exacerbado las diferencias entre Estados miembros, el federalismo actúa como marco analítico, estableciendo las directrices a seguir en la gobernanza de la zona euro, y desembocando en conclusiones de carácter prospectivo sobre la reforma institucional y legal, para dotar de eficacia y legitimidad al gobierno de la UEM. De forma paralela, es preciso verificar si esta crisis ha sido interpretada adecuadamente por parte de los actores políticos y económicos, preguntándonos hasta qué punto la rigidez de los criterios de convergencia y la ortodoxia monetaria son la solución, y de qué manera los mercados financieros interpretan la unión (o la desunión) política en la zona euro. Una de las conclusiones relevantes es que los actores económicos demandan una respuesta de carácter supranacional, requiriendo la explicitación de un marco de unión política, que, a nuestro juicio, ha de ser federal, superando el intergubernamentalismo, ya que dicha lógica no ha cumplido sus objetivos. Ello ha llevado a afrontar la crisis a través de la reforma institucional de los últimos años. Dicha reforma ha sido bien recibida en los mercados, generando una tensión hacia la supranacionalidad, que iría en la línea adecuada, y en este sentido, destacamos los instrumentos de rescate, y, particularmente, la Unión Bancaria. Sin embargo, estas decisiones generan tensiones en la ciudadanía, debido a los graves problemas de déficit democrático en el ámbito decisorio de la UEM, altamente cuestionado, llegando incluso a concretarse acciones políticas que van más allá de lo establecido en los tratados. La tesis se refuerza con el análisis de las implicaciones que tiene el desarrollo de la gobernanza económica, con variables como el mercado interior, el desarrollo presupuestario y el federalismo fiscal. Habiendo demostrado la necesidad de la reforma de la gobernanza de la zona euro, se incide en que la incapacidad de articular un sistema dotado de legitimidad llevaría a una crisis política en la UEM, poniendo en riesgo la viabilidad de la moneda única. Una variable explicativa fundamental en la tesis es demostrar la naturaleza política de la crisis del euro.
The aim of the thesis is to put forward a proposal to stabilise the euro area in the context of the euro crisis and its contradictions, given the premise that in order to ensure the sustainability of the single currency, federal achievements so far must be consolidated. In this research it is assessed to what extent the euro crisis fosters political reform. It is also an aim of the research to analyse the context and the development of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), in order to set a normative theory of federalism, so that it becomes a suitable theoretical framework to assess in full the functioning of the EU laws and institutions as a whole, but, particularly in the EMU. The old frames seem to be worn out and too monolithic to allow for a proper interpretation of the euro area reform. The diachronic analysis of the European integration process allows us to conclude that a process of incremental federalism is well on the way, though there are some loopholes to be sorted out, specially the democratic deficit. These gaps, in fact, are one of the key elements to explain the conclusions of this research. Once it has been possible to set an explanatory variable, and having reached a clear conclusion on the failings of the euro area, the thesis demonstrates that rather than becoming an optimal currency area, the EMU may have, in fact, exacerbated the economic asymmetries between Member States. Federalism is a perfect analytical frame, for it sets out the guidelines to be followed in the realm of the European economic governance. We therefore get to prospective conclusions regarding the institutional reform to be addressed in order to achieve the aim of giving efficiency and legitimacy to the governing system in the euro area. At the same time, we conclude that more analytical coherence is needed to construe how the political and economic actors receive and understand the euro crisis. In this context, it is necessary to assess whether the monetary orthodoxy and the budgetary discipline can offer the right solution to the problem. In this sense, the financial markets react to their perception about the political union (or disunity) in the euro area. One of the most relevant conclusions is that the economic and financial actors ask for a political response. A supranationally integrated system is expected. This requires a frame of political union, i.e. an explicit federal frame. The intergovernmentalist logic lacks the capacity to achieve the goal of financial and political sustainability in the euro area, not to mention the dissociation of decision-making and public opinion. As reflected in certain improvements in market, over the last five years significant progress has been made towards stabilising the euro area. The underlying structural reform and the market response generate a pressure towards supranationalism. The foundations of the EMU are being changed, sometimes going beyond the treaties. This trend is validated when we look at the bailout mechanisms, the ECB intervention, and, particularly, the Banking Union. The thesis is enriched by the analysis of the economic governance, and the political relevance of the single market, the budgetary procedure and the fiscal federalism. The capacity to build up a legitimate system would be an essential step to ensure the viability of the euro. Thus, the euro crisis has a political nature, which takes us to conclude that the loopholes in the institutional building put the euro project at stake, in a context in which democratic legitimacy is of utmost relevance.

Las crisis económicas mundiales surgen en distintos países y los organismos económicos internacionales(OEI) hacen frente a diferentes situaciones en las que las políticas económicas no funcionan adecuadamente y requieren de algún financiamiento para afrontarlas. Su importancia ha impulsado la presente investigación. En un primer momento, se explicará como los marcos regulatorios de los OEI constan de un conjunto de leyes y normas para la ejecución de determinadas operaciones de apoyo con normas internacionales en diversos ámbitos que permiten la estabilidad financiera mundial. Los OEI que destacan en la intervención para afrontar las diferentes crisis económicas son el Fondo Monetario Internacional(FMI), integrado por 184 países miembros que, a través de programas de apoyo y el asesoramiento mediante guías de buenas prácticas, los benefician para hacer frente a la crisis; y el Banco Mundial(BM), con 189 países miembros basa su organización en diferentes instituciones (BIRF, AIF, IFC, MIGA, CIADI) con roles específicos que se ajustan a las necesidades de financiamiento que cada país demanda. En un segundo momento, se explicarán cuáles son las causas principales de las crisis económicas mundiales: la volatilidad en tipo de cambio, las tasas de interés, la ausencia de políticas monetarias adecuadas, el desplome en la bolsa de valores, burbujas inmobiliarias, entre otros. En un último capítulo se revisará los efectos principales: la reducción del salario, empresas en quiebra o procesos de liquidación, fuga de inversionistas, recesión, disminución de inversión pública, e índice de desempleo elevado, entre otros.
International Financial Institutions (IFIs) respond to economic crises in countries where public policies do not work properly and require financing. The regulatory frameworks established for these IFIs are composed of a set of laws and regulations created for the execution of specific support operations that run under the protection of various international treaties in several areas, therefore, allowing global financial stability. The most prominent IFIs in terms of confronting various economic crises are the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The IMF is comprised of 184 member countries that, through support programs and advice on good practice guidelines, benefit from facing potential crisis. The World Bank is comprised of 189 member countries as well and it’s an extended family of five institutions: IBRD, IDA, IFC, MIGA, and ICSID. These institutions have specific roles that adjust to the financing needs that each country demands. The main causes of world economic crises are exchange rate volatility, interest rates, the absence of monetary policies, the crash of the stock market, real estate bubbles, among others. The main effects are the reduction of wages, companies in bankruptcy or filing for liquidation, flight of investors, recession, decrease in public investment, high unemployment rate, among others.
Trabajo de Suficiencia Profesional

Las crisis económicas mundiales surgen en distintos países y los organismos económicos internacionales(OEI) hacen frente a diferentes situaciones en las que las políticas económicas no funcionan adecuadamente y requieren de algún financiamiento para afrontarlas. Su importancia ha impulsado la presente investigación. En un primer momento, se explicará como los marcos regulatorios de los OEI constan de un conjunto de leyes y normas para la ejecución de determinadas operaciones de apoyo con normas internacionales en diversos ámbitos que permiten la estabilidad financiera mundial. Los OEI que destacan en la intervención para afrontar las diferentes crisis económicas son el Fondo Monetario Internacional(FMI), integrado por 184 países miembros que, a través de programas de apoyo y el asesoramiento mediante guías de buenas prácticas, los benefician para hacer frente a la crisis; y el Banco Mundial(BM), con 189 países miembros basa su organización en diferentes instituciones (BIRF, AIF, IFC, MIGA, CIADI) con roles específicos que se ajustan a las necesidades de financiamiento que cada país demanda. En un segundo momento, se explicarán cuáles son las causas principales de las crisis económicas mundiales: la volatilidad en tipo de cambio, las tasas de interés, la ausencia de políticas monetarias adecuadas, el desplome en la bolsa de valores, burbujas inmobiliarias, entre otros. En un último capítulo se revisará los efectos principales: la reducción del salario, empresas en quiebra o procesos de liquidación, fuga de inversionistas, recesión, disminución de inversión pública, e índice de desempleo elevado, entre otros.
International Financial Institutions (IFIs) respond to economic crises in countries where public policies do not work properly and require financing. The regulatory frameworks established for these IFIs are composed of a set of laws and regulations created for the execution of specific support operations that run under the protection of various international treaties in several areas, therefore, allowing global financial stability. The most prominent IFIs in terms of confronting various economic crises are the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The IMF is comprised of 184 member countries that, through support programs and advice on good practice guidelines, benefit from facing potential crisis. The World Bank is comprised of 189 member countries as well and it’s an extended family of five institutions: IBRD, IDA, IFC, MIGA, and ICSID. These institutions have specific roles that adjust to the financing needs that each country demands. The main causes of world economic crises are exchange rate volatility, interest rates, the absence of monetary policies, the crash of the stock market, real estate bubbles, among others. The main effects are the reduction of wages, companies in bankruptcy or filing for liquidation, flight of investors, recession, decrease in public investment, high unemployment rate, among others.
Trabajo de Suficiencia Profesional

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Since the middle of the 1990s economic research relative to speculative attacks has focused attention on developing a new generation model to predict ex ante the likelihood of a currency crisis on a specific country or region. This new family of currency crisis models was denominated Early Warning Systems, well known as EWS Models. This paper examines the 2002 Brazilian Crisis in order to answer two basic questions: a) The empirical literature analysis suggests that the extreme volatility in the Brazilian foreign exchange market on this period could be classified as currency crises? c) Which indicators, considered as one or as a group, could be related to this episode? With this purpose, this paper revisits the main topics on the theoretical literature of speculative attacks, currency crisis and EWS Models. More specifically it examines the Frankel and Rose (1996) precise definition on currency crisis duly adapted to a flexible exchange rate regimes. Also, it was elaborated a vector auto-regression model (VAR) trying to identify which indicators could be related to the extreme exchange market pressure in the 2002 domestic market
A partir de meados da década de 90, os estudos econômicos relacionados a ataques especulativos direcionaram seu foco de atenção ao desenvolvimento de modelos capazes de prever antecipadamente a possibilidade de ocorrência de crises cambiais. A esta gama de modelos estatísticos denominou-se Early Warning Systems, também conhecidos como Modelos EWS. O presente trabalho pretende examinar a crise cambial de 2002, buscando responder a duas questões principais: a) Com base na literatura empírica, é possível caracterizar a acentuada volatilidade verificada no mercado de câmbio doméstico no ano 2002 como "crise cambial"? b) Quais indicadores, analisados isoladamente ou em conjunto, podem ser relacionados com este episódio? Com este propósito revisitam-se aqui os principais pontos da literatura teórica sobre ataques especulativos, crises cambiais e modelos EWS. Especificamente, utiliza-se a definição de crise cambial elaborada por Frankel e Rose (1996), adaptando-a à realidade de um regime de câmbio flutuante. Além disso, elabora-se um modelo de auto-regressão vetorial (VAR) com o intuito de tentar identificar quais variáveis estiveram relacionadas com a ocorrência de pressões cambiais no mercado brasileiro no ano de 2002

Orientador : Luiz Gonzaga de Mello Belluzzo
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas
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Resumo: Não informado
Abstract: Not informed
Doutorado
Doutor em Ciências Humanas

Mestrado Economia Monetária e Financeira
O objectivo desta dissertação é o estudo dos efeitos das políticas orçamental e monetária, bem como as suas interacções (policy mix), e uma curta análise sobre a causalidade entre a despesa pública e a receita fiscal. Foi utilizada a metodologia SVAR para analisar tais interrelações entre estas variáveis com dados para os EUA e Zona Euro (EMU). No geral, os resultados mostram que estes dois casos apresentam diferenças significativas. Primeiro, enquanto no caso dos EUA existe evidência de política orçamental Keynesiana, o mesmo não se aplica no caso da Zona Euro. Segundo, considerando os efeitos da crise económica e financeira global, existe evidência de efeitos não-Keynesianos da política orçamental no caso da Zona Euro (consolidação orçamental expansionista), o que não se verifica no caso dos EUA.Terceiro, existe evidência que corrobora a relação inversa entre as taxas de juro de política monetária e inflação no caso dos EUA, o que não se verifica no caso da Zona Euro (puzzle). Por fim, ambas as políticas parecem ser complementares, ou seja, estas tendem a mover-se na mesma direcção. Outra semelhança aparece quando é analisada a relação entre despesa pública e receita fiscal, onde existe evidência de políticas orçamentais restrictivas.
The objective of this dissertation is to study the effects of fiscal and monetary policies, as well as their interactions (policy mix), and to provide a short analysis on the causality between public spending and taxation. We use a SVAR approach to analyze such interrelations between these variables for data collected from the US and the Euro Area (EMU). Overall, our results show that these two cases are different from each other. First, while in the case of the US there is evidence of Keynesian monetary policy, the same is not true in the case of the EMU. Second, considering the effects of the global economic and financial crisis, there is evidence of non-Keynesian fiscal policy in the case of the EMU (expansionary fiscal consolidation), while it does not hold in the case of the US. Third, there is evidence supporting the traditional inverse relationship between monetary policy interest rates and inflation in the case of the US, whereas in the case of the EMU there is a price puzzle (frequent in SVAR studies). Finally, in both cases the policies seem to act as complements, i.e., they tend to move in the same direction. Another similarity appears when analyzing the relationship between public spending and taxation, where there is evidence supporting a fiscal retrenchment.
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This paper uses U.S. macroeconomic data drawn from 2001 to 2010 in order to test for the operation of a credit channel of monetary transmission. Using a combination of a VAR and ADL time series frameworks, evidence is found for the impairment of the credit channel during the crisis period relative to the period which preceded it. Evidence is also found against the presence of a "credit crunch" during the crisis, and supporting evidence is found for the existence of a "credit trap." This analysis indicates a significant role for credit market imperfections in the transmission of monetary policy, and holds policy implications for the potential impact of future monetary expansions conducted in the setting of a financial crisis.

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The aim of this paper is to analyse whether the economic policy response capability was a relevant factor for minimizing the 2008 financial crisis severity within its first year. The research hypothesis is that countries with a larger space for expansionary policies – higher interest rates and better fiscal results – have registered a less severe crisis. The econometric results corroborate with the hypothesis for the monetary policy. In relation to the fiscal policy, the sign of the parameters was the opposite of what was expected, signaling that, even countries with good fiscal results can experience limitations to Keynesian stimulus due to debt intolerances. However, the interation between central govern result and gross debt confirms the research hypothesis, whereas a better management of the fiscal flow and debt stock simultaneously seems to be relevant. Adding an investment grade variable to the specifications highlighted that the crisis was more severe within the developed economies.
Este trabalho tem por objetivo analisar se a capacidade de resposta de política econômica foi fator relevante para minimizar a severidade da crise financeira de 2008, no primeiro ano do episódio. A hipótese da pesquisa é que países com um maior espaço para políticas expansionistas – maiores taxas de juros maiores e melhores resultados do governo central – tenham registrado uma crise menos severa, tudo mais constante. Os resultados econométricos corroboram com a hipótese em relação à política monetária. No que diz respeito à política fiscal, o sinal dos parâmetros encontrado é oposto ao esperado, sinalizando que, possivelmente, mesmo países com bons resultados fiscais possam ter limitações a estímulos keynesianos em função da tolerância ao seu nível de endividamento. Entretanto, a interação entre o resultado do governo central e o endividamento está em linha com a hipótese da pesquisa, uma vez que uma melhor gestão tanto do fluxo fiscal, quanto do estoque da dívida no ano anterior ao evento mostrou-se relevante. A adição da variável de investment grade às especificações ressaltou uma crise mais severa nas economias desenvolvidas.

Mestrado em Economia e Políticas Públicas
Esta dissertação pretende analisar o papel do Banco Central Europeu (BCE) na União Europeia e na crise da zona euro. Especialmente, procura compreender se a arquitetura inicial sobre a qual o BCE foi construído era adequada para responder aos desafios que se vieram colocar durante a crise, procurando analisar as alterações motivadas pelo desenvolvimento da crise. O BCE é uma instituição fundamental para a união monetária. Estando no centro da questão, dadas as características financeira e bancária da crise, o BCE tem vindo a enfrentar muitos desafios. Muitos têm criticado o papel do BCE na crise da zona euro, realçando a sua limitação de poderes pelos Tratados e a sua lentidão na resolução dos problemas de liquidez dos estados membros. Outros consideram que o BCE tem sido a instituição determinante para a resolução da crise. Mas durante o período em que a crise se foi aprofundando, e em que a crise financeira inicial evoluiu para a crise da zona euro, o BCE enfrentou e continua a enfrentar muitos desafios e mudanças, assumindo um papel decisivo na crise. No Sistema Monetário Europeu, o BCE é agora uma instituição mais forte com mais instrumentos e novos poderes. A União Europeia enfrentou o seu maior desafio e conseguiu sobreviver unida pelo euro. Contudo, o BCE, que tinha a estabilidade de preços como o seu principal objetivo, enfrenta agora o perigo de deflação. Manter a estabilidade financeira é agora um objetivo fundamental e a regulação das instituições financeiras é fundamental para a estabilidade da zona euro. Uma união bancária eficaz, capaz de regular a integração financeira e de efetuar uma supervisão bancária centralizada adequada é fundamental para a continuidade da zona euro. Nesta presumível fase final da crise europeia, o BCE tornou-se num banco central muito mais interventivo devido às circunstâncias excepcionais que tem vindo a enfrentar. Esta dissertação começa por caracterizar o papel de um banco central numa união monetária e os seus constrangimentos. Seguidamente, expõe as políticas, os instrumentos e a arquitetura original do BCE. No final, é abordado concretamente o papel do BCE na crise da zona euro com a análise paramétrica dos efeitos das políticas do BCE nas taxas de juro das dívidas soberanas.
This dissertation is an attempt to explain the role of the European Central Bank (ECB) in the European Union and in the Eurozone crisis. In depth, it attempts to comprehend if the initial framework on which the ECB was built was designed to respond to the problems faced by the Eurozone, and to analyze the changes motivated by the course of the Eurozone crisis. The ECB is a key institution in the monetary union. Being at the heart of the problem, the ECB faces many challenges. Many have criticized the ECB’s role in the current crisis, pointing out its lack of power and slowness in solving the Eurozone’s problems, while others see the ECB as the main contributor to solving the ongoing crisis. But as the crisis deepened, and the initial financial crisis became the Eurozone crisis, the ECB has experienced many challenges and changes, playing a key role in the Eurozone crisis. The ECB is now a stronger European institution with more instruments and power. The European Union has faced its biggest challenge and has, for now, survived united by the euro. However, the ECB that saw price stability as its primary objective now faces the danger of deflation. Financial stability is now of major importance and the regulation of financial and banking institutions must be undertaken by the ECB in order to prevent future crisis. A strong Banking Union, capable to regulate financial integration and to supervise banking institutions is fundamental to the Eurozone. In this presumably final stage of the Eurozone crisis, the ECB has evolved into a much more active central bank, due to the exceptional circumstances. This work characterizes the role of a central bank in a monetary union and its constraints. After, it describes the ECB’s framework, instruments and policies. Lastly, this dissertation addresses the ECB’s role in the Eurozone crisis supported by a parametrical analysis of the effects of the ECB’s measures on sovereign debts.

A economia mundial foi abalada, em 2007-2008, por uma crise financeira internacional, que incitou um grande debate, tanto na academia quanto nas instituições multilaterais, sobre a reforma do Sistema Monetário Internacional (SMI). A presente dissertação propõe analisar se a necessidade de reforma do SMI, conforme propunha Keynes e propõe os pós-keynesianos, é uma condição necessária para restabelecer a estabilidade da atividade econômica em economias capitalistas, financeirizadas e globais, situação em que as economias estão inseridas nos dias de hoje. Para tanto, busca-se inserir a crise financeira internacional nos problemas inerentes à atual configuração do SMI e da globalização financeira, assim como se apresenta o debate acadêmico em torno das diferentes visões da crise e suas propostas de reestruturação. Ademais, retrata-se o debate que está ocorrendo nas reuniões e nas publicações das principais Autoridades Monetárias e dos órgãos multilaterais e, a partir dessa demonstração, procura-se identificar as questões presentes no diálogo entre essas instituições dentro das proposições acadêmicas de reforma. As análises feitas permitiram concluir que o debate das Autoridades Monetárias e dos órgãos multilaterais converge para a proposta de reestruturação do SMI defendida pelos autores (pós) keynesianos. Dessa forma, aceita-se a hipótese de que a reforma do SMI, nos moldes (pós) keynesianos, é condição necessária para se estabilizar as economias atuais. Por fim, sugere-se, para trabalhos futuros, a discussão institucionalista sobre a viabilidade de adoção da proposta de reforma (pós) keynesiana.
The world economy was hit in 2007-2008 by na international financial crisis, which prompted a great debate, both in academia and multilateral institution on the reform of the International Monetary System (IMS). This dissertation proposes to examine the need for reform the IMS, as Keynes proposed and proposes the (post) keynesians, is a necessary condition for resoring the stability of economic activity in capitalist economies, financialized and globalizes in which economies are embedded in today. Therefore, it seeks to enter the international financial crisis on the problems inherent in the current configuration of the IMS and financial globalization, as well as presents the acadmic debate arount the different views of the crisis and its proposals for restructuring. Furthermore, it portrays the debate taking place in meeting and publications of the mais Monetary Authorities and multilateral agencies, and from this demonstration, we try to identify the issues in the dialogue between these institutions within the academic reform proposals. The analysis made it possible to conclude that the discussion of Monetary Authorities and multilateral agencies converges to the restructuring proposal of the IMS, put forward by the (post) keynesian authors. Thus, we accept the hypothesis that the reformo f the ISM, similar to (post) keynesians, is a necessary condition to stabilize the economies of today. Finally, it is suggested for future work, the institutional discussion on the feasibility of adoption of the (post) keynesian reform proposal.

This thesis consists of four self-contained but related papers trying to uncover different aspects of banking and sovereign risk in the member countries of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). From a methodological point of view, they all have in common the contingent claims model from the theory of finance, which is used to value call options on a stock. The first paper, “Bank risk behavior and connectedness in EMU countries”, studies the structural differences in banking sector and financial regulations at country level to measure and analyze the banking sector risk behavior. Deviating from the current view, which in our opinion is excessively focused on Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs), we introduce a micro approach to emphasize the role of smaller financial institutions in build-up of risk. The paper starts with a discussion of the reasons that are needed to consider this choice. Contingent claims analysis model is employed to calculate the risk of individual banks which is then aggregated at country level. The remaining of the paper tries to highlight the information content of country level banking risk indices. It is shown that if banking sector risk is calculated at country level using a bigger sample of banks, it can provide a simple, convenient and intuitive forward looking risk measure. The risk measures differentiate countries based on the structural differences in their financial sectors and show strong correlations with national and regional market sentiment indicators. They outperform the regulatory risk measures based at the European level and the causal linkages run from them to the latter indicators, suggesting better information content. And even though they have high correlations, causality and connectedness tests reveal no systemic component. The second paper, “Sovereigns and banks in the euro area: a tale of two crises”, attempts to quantify the directional intensity of sovereign-bank linkages in the euro area countries. To this end, we borrow the indicator of banking sector risk in each country from the first paper, and use a traditional measure of sovereign risk (10-year government yield spreads over Germany). The paper starts with the review of channels via which banks and sovereigns are linked in a vicious cycle. We apply a dynamic approach to testing for Granger causality between the two measures of risk in each country, allowing us to check for episodes of significant and abrupt increase in short-run causal linkages. The empirical results indicate that episodes of causality intensification vary considerably in both directions over time and across the different EMU countries. The directionality suggests the presence of causality intensification, mainly from banks to sovereigns, in the crisis periods. Our findings also present empirical evidence about the existence of an adverse feedback loop between sovereigns and banks in some euro-area countries. The third paper, “Incorporating creditors' seniority into contingent claim models: Application to peripheral euro area countries”, develops and uses a seniority structure of sovereign's creditors to analyze the impact of sectoral distribution of debt on the sovereign credit risk. Specifically, this paper highlights the role of multilateral creditors (i.e., the ECB, IMF, ESM etc.) and their preferred creditor status in explaining the sovereign default risk of peripheral euro area (EA) countries. Incorporating lessons from sovereign debt crises in general, and from the Greek debt restructuring in particular, we define the priority structure of sovereigns' creditors that is most relevant for peripheral EA countries in severe crisis episodes. This new priority structure of creditors, together with the contingent claims methodology, is then used to derive a set of sovereign credit risk indicators. In particular, the sovereign distance-to-default indicator, proposed in this paper (which includes both accounting metrics and market-based measures) aims to isolate sovereign credit risk by using information from the public sector balance sheets to build it up. Analyzing and comparing it with traditional market-based measures of sovereign risk suggests that the measurement and predictive ability of credit risk measures can be vastly improved if we account for the changing composition of sovereigns' balance sheet risk based on creditors' seniority. In the last paper, “Revisiting the sovereign-bank linkages: Evidence from contingent claims analysis”, we reconsider the sovereign-bank nexus as discussed in the second paper to check the robustness of our findings. Using the banking sector risk indicator developed in our first paper, together with the sovereign risk index build in the third paper we re-inspect the bank-sovereign linkages. We use three different statistical measures of interconnection based on principal components analysis, Granger causality network and Diebold-Yilmaz's connectedness index. We also compare our results with alternative specifications using existing market-based indicators of banking and sovereign risk. Our results suggest strong connectedness and co-movement between country-level banking and sovereign risk indicators. We also find evidence of an increasing role of idiosyncratic risk factors driving the evolution of all risk indices in the post-crisis period, thus supporting the “wake-up call hypothesis” that the sensitivity of financial market participants to fundamental differences increased during the crisis. Country-wise analysis of time-varying bi-directional linkages using dynamic Granger-causality suggests the development of a bank-sovereign doom loop in Spain corroborating for this country the findings of our second paper. Connectedness analysis also suggest that increasingly the risk is being driven away from market-based uncertainty to the idiosyncratic risk factors, which are better captured by the contingent claim based indices.

This thesis analyses determinants for structural reforms in the euro area. First, it is theoretically scrutinized how the common monetary policy of the European Central Bank causes a reform bias between small and large countries. Second, it is examined how private market adjustment, structural reforms and their interaction affect the intra-euro area current account balances of euro area countries. Third, it is analysed how an asymmetric foreign asset and liability distribution across the euro area affects single countries need for structural reforms of labour markets. Fourth, the impact of fiscal stabilization policy on structural reform activity will be examined.

This thesis is an investigation of the extent and importance of China's dependence upon imported silver in the years leading up to the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644. The commercial expansion and fiscal reforms of the late Ming years had resulted in an increased demand for silver, yet very little of the metal was mined domestically and China relied on foreign sources to supply the increasing demand. It is this dependence upon foreign sources of supply, at a time when the demand for monetary media was continually increasing, which has led to the suggestion that the collapse of the Ming dynasty may have been a consequence, at least in part, of a decline in the volume of imported silver. The thesis gives a detailed consideration of this hypothesis. It also examines the suggestion that the changing pattern of money-use within the empire, the increasing use of silver, was associated with the rise of new social tensions, and that together these undermined the stability of the Ming administration. The evidence accumulated from the perusal of this monetary perspective will be balanced against what is known of the turmoil of these late Ming years so as to broaden an understanding of the crisis of state and society in the seventeenth century China.

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses.
PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you.
2031-01-02

Although in the debate over the current financial crisis there is a general agreement on the role played by foreign capital inflows into the United States —that, together with financial deregulation, allowed for an excessive increase of credit in that country—, we think that their importance has not been fully appreciated, in terms of their link with the asymmetrical organization of an international monetary system that uses the dollar as a reserve currency, and their relationship with the economic growth model adopted by the US over the last thirty years; this relied on increased expenditure on the part of credit-financed households in order to maintain its dynamism, while inflation was kept down by importing cheap foreign manufactures at the expense of the domestic sector’s profitability. We suggest here that the crisis was related to the impossibility of maintaining this economic growth pattern indefinitely, and that recovery will require a radical reform of the international monetary system, as well as a general increase in economic efficiency.
Aunque en el debate sobre la actual crisis financiera se ha reconocido el rol jugado por el influjo de capitales extranjeros hacia Estados Unidos —el cual, conjuntamente con la desregulación financiera, hizo posible el crecimiento desmedido del crédito en ese país—, pensamos que aún no se ha reconocido la importancia de tal influjo, ni su conexión con la forma asimétrica como está organizado el actual sistema monetario internacional, ni tampoco su relación con el tipo de crecimiento adoptado por ese país en las últimas tres décadas, que pudo mantener su dinamismo gracias al aumento del gasto de los hogares financiado con crédito, y que mantuvo baja la inflación gracias a la importación de manufacturas baratas, al costo de ver caer la rentabilidad de su sector manufacturero. Sugerimos aquí que la crisis surge por la imposibilidad de llevar adelante ese tipo de crecimiento de manera indefinida y sin sobresaltos, y que una recuperación requerirá tanto una reforma radical del sistema monetario, como el aumento de la eficiencia económica a nivel mundial.

This thesis focuses on the changing modes of state intervention into the economy in neoliberalism. It contends that the so called free market is neither a natural process nor an inevitable result of the harmony of interest, but the result of a deliberate political making process. The global economic crisis provided ample evidence to refute the claim that state and market are separately existing and antagonistic entities and indicates that the issue is not the market or the state, since the state in a capitalist society is equally subordinate to capital, simply providing an alternative mode of regulation of capital accumulation. The state has always been essential for "
proper"
workings of the market, especially for the interests of capital and the neoliberal state is not an exception

1. Abstract 2. Introduction to the main monetary policy tools in China 2.1 Reserve requirements 2.2 Open market operations 2.3 Interest rate policy 2.4 Credit policy and window guidance 2.5 Real estate credit control 3. Loosening monetary policy and its effect on the banking 3.1 Loosening monetary policy measures 3.2 The effect of the expansionary monetary policy on the banking 4. Sound monetary policy with tight trend and its effect on banking 4.1 Main measures of the sound monetary policy with tight trend 4.2 The effect of sound monetary policy with tight trend on banking 5. Conclusion

The purpose of this Master's thesis is divided into two steps. The first step sums up all the relevant theory about financial crises and monetary policies. The second step analyzes not only the past but focuses mainly on the global financial crisis which started in 2007. The cornerstones of this analytical bloc are monetary policies of central banks in China, Venezuela, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Two hypotheses are stated in the beginning of this Master's thesis. These focus on fixed exchange rate regimes and foreign exchange reserves. The analytical part of Master's thesis tries to prove whether these hypotheses can be marked as valid or invalid.

Anti-Blanchard es una crítica del famoso manual Macroeconomía de Olivier Blanchard, economista mundialmente reconocido que llegó a ser jefe del Fondo Monetario Internacional. El volumen, además, incluye un imperdible debate entre Emiliano Brancaccio y Olivier Blanchard sobre las crisis y las revoluciones de la teoría y la política económicas.

Mestrado em Economia Monetária e Financeira
Através de uma análise às políticas monetárias dos países da União Europeia utilizadas durante a crise actual, verifica-se que durante os anos de 2008 a 2010 houve uma variação negativa do PIB bastante mais acentuada nos países pertencentes à Zona Euro que nos países não pertencentes à moeda única. Neste trabalho mostra-se ainda qual o peso que cada um dos instrumentos de política monetária teve, desde o começo da Zona Euro, na variação do PIB, tendo sido a taxa de câmbio aquele que revelou maior eficácia. Para a obtenção destes resultados foi feita uma estimação em dados de painel recorrendo a dados trimestrais de 1999 Q1 até 2010 Q4 dos 15 países da UE(15).
This paper analyses the monetary policies of the European Union member states emerged during the current crisis. It is confirmed that, between the years 2008 and 2010, there was a negative growth of GDP much stronger in the countries inside than outside the Euro Area. Using pooled panel OLS estimation, with quarterly data from Q1 1999 to Q4 2010 from all EU(15) countries this work also shows the weight that each monetary policy's instrument had on GDP variation, since the start of the Euro Zone, and where the exchange rate proved to be more effective.

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar la efectividad de las “tasas nominales negativas" empleadas por algunos bancos centrales europeos para la consecución de diferentes objetivos de política monetaria durante el periodo posterior a la crisis financiera internacional; contrastar las herramientas convencionales de política monetaria con las no convencionales; comparar los resultados obtenidos en los distintos países bajo estudio; determinar aspectos positivos y negativos de dichas herramientas no convencionalesy formular propuestas para la eliminación del Effective Lower Bound.
Fil: Martin Navarro, Marcelo Alejandro. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas.

The imbalances within the Euro-zone were the main reasons of the crisis that had led to the growing budget deficits in the Southern Europe resulting in the accumulation of unsustainable debt. The imbalances were caused by the declining competitiveness of the South vis-s-vis the North. The main causes of the declining competitiveness are the differences in unit labor costs invoked by different regulations concerning the labor markets in the Euro-zone countries and the diverging levels of productivity, which is liked with the different levels of technological advancement. The contributing factor is the institutional imperfections of the EMU, that did not allow the countries in Southern Europe to restore their competitiveness by traditional means without providing them with alternatives.

This thesis analyses whether the concept of monetary sovereignty evolves under the impact of globalization and financial integration, and provides a framework for assessing what this implies. Thereby, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of both the contemporary exercise of sovereign powers in monetary and financial matters and of the driving forces behind the evolution of international law in this field. As elaborated in chapter 1, the contemporary concept of monetary sovereignty proposed by this thesis is not static but dynamic in nature. Due to the dual nature of sovereignty as a concept having not only positive but also important normative components, monetary sovereignty cannot become eroded under the impact of legal and economic constraints. Chapter 2 examines the ongoing hybridization of international monetary law arising from changes in the sources of this complex body of law, from the unsuitability of the categories of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ law for characterizing all normative evolutions in this field, and from the rise of private and transnational monetary law. Chapter 3 scrutinizes the phenomenon of exchange rate misalignment under monetary and trade law. Intrinsically related, it assesses which aspects of the IMF’s legal framework should be reformed in order to tackle contemporary challenges to the stability of the international monetary system, such as global current account imbalances. Chapter 4 analyses the increasing regionalization of monetary sovereignty. It argues that, to the extent that transferring sovereign powers to a monetary union is what provides a state’s population with maximum monetary and financial stability, the underlying transfers are not a surrender of monetary sovereignty, but its effective exercise under the form of cooperative sovereignty. Finally, chapter 5 assesses the implications of the contemporary concept of monetary sovereignty proposed herein for the reorganization of the international financial architecture in the wake of the Great Recession.

O objetivo do trabalho será avaliar se os efeitos da crise financeira de 2008 relativizaram as características da autonomia dos bancos centrais, que são conceitualmente vinculadas à manutenção da estabilidade de preços como objetivo singular da política monetária. Devido a seu perfil institucional e seu contexto de atuação, as decisões do Banco de México (Banxico) servirão como estudo de caso. A análise busca demonstrar que, diante da severidade dos efeitos da crise, o Banxico optou por aplicar uma política monetária eclética no período, já que abandonou ocasionalmente seu mandato constitucional orientado para a estabilidade de preços, mesmo que sem prejuízos ao cumprimento das metas de inflação. Por um lado, o banco seguiu conservador na utilização da taxa de juros como principal instrumento monetário, sem recorrer à compra direta de ativos e outros mecanismos não convencionais aplicados nos países industrializados. Por outro, demonstrou sensibilidade à degradação do cenário internacional e à atividade doméstica, tanto ao manter os juros inalterados durante um longo período, como ao reduzi-los sucessivamente diante do desempenho fraco da produção entre 2013 e 2014. Assim, ao menos durante a crise, o comportamento do Banxico se afastou das definições convencionais sobre a autonomia do banco central, o que reforçou a natureza política da organização.
This article aims to evaluate if the effects of the 2008 financial crisis relativized the main characteristics of the central bank\'s autonomy, that are conceptually related to the maintenance of price stability as a single objective of the monetary policy. Due to its institutional profile and its operational context, the decisions of the Banco de Mexico (Banxico) will serve as a case study. The analysis seek to demonstrate that, despite the severity of the crisis, Banxico has chosen to apply na eclectic monetary policy in the period, as it occasionally abandoned its constitutional mandate oriented towards price stability, even without harm to the achievement of its inflation targets. On the one hand, the bank remained conservative in the use of the interest rate as the main monetary instrument, without resorting to the direct asset purchase or other non-conventional mechanisms applied by industrialized countries. On the other, the bank demonstrated sensitivity to the degradation of the international markets and domestic activity, both by keeping the interest rate at the same level for a longer period as by reducing it succesively before the poor output performance between 2013 and 2014. Thus, at least during the crisis, Banxico\'s behavior departed from the conventional definitions of the autonomy of central banks, which reinforced the political nature of the organization.

This thesis examines the multi-lateral considerations that, in our view, underlay the formulation of monetary policy in India in the period between the two world wars. During and after the First World War, Britain faced a severe liquidity crisis. We argue that monetary policy in India was formulated to take account of this crisis. Traditionally, India was a large absorber of gold on the non-monetary account. The persistent aim of British monetary policy in the Indian context during the entire interwar period was that of not allowing India to set up a monetary demand for gold in addition to her non-monetary demand for it and secondly, through deflationary policies (including exchange rate adjustments), to limit India's non-monetary gold demands to the minimum. Indian gold exports during the depression, which gave room for manoeuvre in the management of the sterling after September 1931, were a logical sequel to this policy. The British liquidity crisis in this period took the form of her current account surpluses being inadequate to support a high level of overseas lending. Besides, in an uncertain financial environment, Britain was a large short-term debtor as the British bank rate acted as much to increase her short-term liabilities as it did by calling in her short-term assets. The British desire to return to gold at the pre-1914 parity required domestic deflation which itself was a matter of severe political contention. In the circumstances, Britain hoped her return to gold would be accomplished by a US inflation and US export of capital. Compounding this situation was the thinly veiled fear, in Britain, of the erosion of the key currency role of the sterling and the loss of its global financial leadership to the USA. Control over Indian monetary policy and its outcome proved valuable to Britain in this environment.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the effects of macroeconomic  indicators on the government debt of Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIIGS), based on the data from 1990 to 2010 and employed a panel data model. The research finds that the macroeconomc conditions of the PIIGS are all deteriorated to some extent, and these deteriorations lead the accumulation of government debt. The expansionary fiscal policy is an important factor that accounts for the high debt ratio of the PIIGS. On the other hand, the discrepancy between the unified monetary policy and the separated fiscal policy obstructs the adjustment mechanism by the individual government, and leads the exchange rate and interest rate instruments not efficient.