Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Fluctuations in output'

The paper analyses the degree of output persistence in GDP in order to empirically discriminate between the Solow growth model, the perfect competition endogenous growth model, the imperfect competition endogenous growth model, and the subcase of a multiple equilibria model of endogenous growth for the case of Austria. We find that a temporary shock in the growth rate of output induces a permanent and larger effect on the level of GDP. This leads us to refute the Solow growth model and the perfect competition model. We find strong empirical support for the imperfect competition growth model, but cannot fully rule out the possibility of multiple equilibria growth rates.
Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Since the adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Canadian dollar has come to be regarded as a petro-currency. Consequently, rising prices of oil and gas (as well as other natural resources) would increase capital inflows that would lead to a higher exchange rate and contribute to the decimation of the export-oriented Canadian manufacturing sector by making Canadian products less competitive internationally. Some have argued that the Canadian economy has started to show symptoms related to the Dutch Disease. One important symptom is the slow rate of productivity growth, which consequently leads to the theory that Canada’s productivity performance depends significantly on the foreign exchange value of the domestic currency. This dissertation attempts to address these issues and seeks to solve the question of whether the Canadian economy is suffering from the Dutch Disease, as well as whether or not movements of the Canadian dollar are responsible for the low Canadian productivity growth since the 1990s.

This study investigates fluctuations of construction output, and growth of the output in Kenya. Fluctuation and growth of construction activity are matters of concern in construction industries of many countries in the developing as well as in the developed world. The construction industry of Kenya is therefore an exemplifying case for this phenomenon. Construction activity in Kenya fluctuates excessively and grows very slowly. This remains a big challenge to policy makers, developers, consultants and contractors in their decision-making processes. In this study, systems thinking was applied to investigate the problem of excessive fluctuations and stunted growth of construction output in Kenya. The study developed a system dynamics model to simulate the construction output problem behaviour. The historical behaviour of the construction industry was described using construction output data of a 40-year period - from 1964 to 2003. Line graphs of the historical data exhibited profiles that helped to identify the system archetypes operating in the industry. From the profiles, it was deduced that the problem of fluctuations and slow growth of construction output in Kenya is encapsulated in two system archetypes, namely: balancing process with a delay, and limits to growth. The relationship between construction output and its determinant factors from the constru ction industry's environment was investigated using time series regression, which involved autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) regression and multiple regression modelling of the output. On the basis of the historical data analysis and the system archetypes identified, a system dynamics (SD) model was developed to replicate the problem of fluctuations and slow growth in the construction output. The data used to develop the system dynamics model was annual construction output in Kenya from 1964 to 2003. The model was then used: to appraise policy changes suggested by construction industry participants in Kenya, and to project construction output in Kenya from year 2004 to year 2050, in order to establish the expected future fluctuations and growth trends of the construction output. It was observed that three fundamental changes are necessary in the system structure of the construction industry of Kenya, in order to minimize fluctuations and foster growth in construction output in the country, in the long run. The changes are: setting long-term targets of annual construction output in the industry as a whole, incorporating reserve capacity in the production process, and expanding the system st ructure to capture a larger construction market. The study recommends regulation of the response of the construction industry of Kenya to changes in construction demand in the market, and expansion of the construction industry's market into the African region and beyond.

This paper empirically investigates the propagation of business sentiment within the European Union (EU) and adds to the literature on shock absorption via a common market's real economy. To this end, we combine EU-wide official business sentiment indicators with world input-output (IO) data and information on indirect wage costs. Econometrically, we model interdependencies in economic activities via IO-linkages and apply space-time models. The resulting evidence provides indication for the existence of substantial spillovers in business sentiment formation. Accordingly, and highlighted by the estimated impacts of changes in indirect labor costs, policy reforms aiming at increasing the resilience of the European single market need to take these spillovers into account in order to increase its effectiveness.
Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

碩士
國立成功大學
經濟學系碩博士班
98
The banking system plays the role of financial intermediation to channel the funds from the hands of depositors to firms and other investors. The intermediary function of the banking system may promote the efficiency in allocating scarce financial resources to the needy hands; it is also potential source of disturbance to the macroeconomy. In order to avoid default risk to protect the value of their loan assets, banks usually make subjective risk evaluation in their credit granting processes. As a result, once banks change their subjective risk evaluations and alter credit standards, it will disturb funding availability to the firms and hence the macroeconomic performance. This study adopts Bernanke and Blinder’s (1988) model and incorporates indicator of bank credit (risk) standard to investigate the effects of changes in bank credit standard on the performance of macroeconomy. As bank credit standard reflect enterprises’ external finance premium, this paper uses the spread of Baa and Aaa company bonds as a proxy indicator for bank credit standard. The empirical results show that an increase in bank credit standard has negative impact on output and price. Moreover, an equivalent magnitude change in bank credit standard and interest rate will create almost equal disturbance to aggregate output. A further exploration was made splitting the data into periods of credit contraction and expansion to investigate whether change in credit standard has symmetric effects in these two periods. The empirical results indicate that increases in credit standard produce more profound and prolonged impacts to aggregate output in the expansion period than in contraction period.

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Double Degree in Economics from the Nova School of Business and Economics and University of Maastricht
This paper investigates the role of income inequality on the size of fiscal multipliers during the recent crisis. Using various measures of income inequality, the empirical strategy developed suggests a positive and statistically significant impact of inequality on the size of fiscal multipliers of European economies during 2010-11. The results are robust after controlling for the role of outliers, by adding controls that could be driving the results, testing for different forecast vintages, and using a different source of standardized income inequality data. Theoretical arguments that may explain the results are presented. Namely the existence of credit constraints to relatively poor households, and the lower propensity to consume of relatively wealthier households.

碩士
中原大學
電機工程研究所
106
As the Hybrid Energy Storage System (HESS) has the advantages of both power-based and energy-based energy storage devices, it is suitable for a microgrid to smooth the power fluctuation. Analyze the power data of a grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) power station. This research considers grid-connected PV requirements to join the HESS and take advantage of the HESS charge and discharge characteristics to reduce the problems caused by light intensity and temperature change of grid-connected PV power output fluctuations. Battery optimization control strategies designed to reduce power and capacity of the HESS configuration. This paper Analyze the effect evaluation when HESS rated power and capacity changed. In addition, proposed a strategy that using methods to decide the most representative day among a year. Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is applied to transform the solar radiation into the frequency domain. The simulation results verify the feasibility of this strategy and method.

碩士
東海大學
工業工程與經營資訊學系
103
With the vast amount of capital invested in the 300 mm (12-in.) wafer fab facility, how to effectively utilize the capacity is always a crucial challenge for semiconductor capacity planners. Currently, static capacity planning model, which is based on the historical data of the average available time of machines and routing, is usually employed to plan the required capacity for satisfying the demand plan. Due to the complexity of semiconductor production and many production constraints and frequently occurred abnormal events (e.g., machine breakdown) are not considered, the static model is very hard to estimate a reasonable capacity plan for satisfying a weekly/monthly demand (i.e., wafer out) plan. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a capacity planning and analysis simulation (CPAS) model which takes into account the production characteristics/constraints, the internal behavior of machines, and the dispatching rules applied in a full-scale 300 mm wafer fab. The accuracy of the CPAS model is validated with the actual input (e.g., wafer release per day, machine run time/available time, routing, WIP) and output (e.g., Cycle time, MOVE, Wafer Out) for all machine tool sets. The CPAS model was also employed by capacity planners in a leading wafer fab in Taiwan to study the effect of the fluctuation of available time (AT) of critical/bottleneck production equipments to fab’s overall capacity and output performance. Analysis results show that AT fluctuation may result in 3% to 5% capacity loss, and a sensitivity analysis of the degree of capacity loading and AT to the throughput (i.e., wafer out) is also performed to demonstrate how to apply CPAS model to provide information for making the capacity investment decision.

碩士
國立成功大學
政治經濟學研究所
92
Abstract The thesis intends to investigate the impact of exchange rate fluctutations on a country’s real output (GDP). More specifically, whether the depreciation of domestic currency is expansionary or contractionary for Taiwan’s and South Korea’s economies. According to the traditional theory, it is expected that depreciation in domestic currency generally decreases the relative price of domestically produced goods and imports while stimulating exports, and thereby generates an expansionary effect on output. Following the 1997-98 financial crisis with drastic depreciation of their respective currencies in the hard-hit countries. This outcome seems counterintuitive at the first sight. To examine the issue, Taiwan and South Korea, two major export-oriented economies in Asia are considered. Johansen’s cointegration analysis and Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model are employed to test exchange rate fluctutationons on the effect of outputs. For Taiwan’s and South Korea’s time series data of 1970I~2002IV and 1971I~2002IV, respectively, several findings can be provided. First, the long-run impact of exchange rate fluctuations, on Taiwan’s output, real depreciation of the NT dollar is said to be expansionary; while a depreciation of the Korean won is no effect in output. Second, for the short-run impact of exchange rate fluctuations on output, real depreciation of the Korean won is contractionary. Because depreciation raises the cost of imports, especially the intermediate inputs and capital goods, and hence. It lowers the aggregate supply. Third, the result from the cointegration analysis implies a significant relation between the output and trade dependence, therefore International trade development indeed promotes economy growth for Taiwan or South Korea. From our empirical studies, prompting depreciation of the NT dollar is not a wise choice. It should be considering a nation’s economic structure and high trade dependence. For exchange rate policy, an important policy implication can be derived that the central bank should maintain a stable exchange rate and reduce the risk of major fluctuations in exchange rate. And exchange rate policy should be executed extremely cautiously. The depreciation of the currency may not have an expansionary effect in the long-run, and could have an adverse effect in the short-run.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
國際企業學研究所
94
This thesis intends to investigate the impact of real effective exchange rate (REER) fluctuation on Taiwan and Japan’s real output (GDP). Discovered by existing literature and previous research, the depreciation effects of domestic currency on output are not consistent. Following Asia financial crisis during 1997, many currencies of Southeast Asia Countries dramatically depreciated. Nevertheless, their outputs had not been increased. The result contradicted with traditional theories, which is considered to be stimulating economic growth by changing relative prices of goods between home and foreign countries. Taiwan is a small open economy whereas Japan is large. Therefore, international trade is very important for their economic growth, hence to examine the extent of variation on REER under different open economy scales. The empirical analysis was based on Agenor’s (1991) theoretical model and adopted econometrics methods including unit root test, Johansen cointegration test and VECM. Employing the time series data of both Taiwan and Japan was over the 1980I-2004IV period. From our empirical results: the depreciation of REER on Taiwanese NT dollar and Japanese Yen had expansion effect on output in the short-run. In the long-run, the depreciation of REER on Taiwan had expansion effect, but not significant on Japan Yen. By cointegration analysis, it discovered they had a long-run positive relationship between output and foreign trade dependence. Hence, it revealed increase in international trade benefited economic growth. The depreciation effect of the local currency is like two edges of a sword, it depends on the relative effects between the expansion on aggregate demand and the contraction on aggregate supply. Since the total amount of foreign trade in Taiwan and Japan accounts for sizable proportions of GDP, the effect may be lower than expectation if the governments desire to stimulate economic growth by depreciation. Compared with nominal exchange rate, REER contributes to one country''s policy making even more. As to Taiwan and Japan, maintaining REER relative stability would reduce unnecessary exchange rate risk cost while the two counterparts proceed with trade. Consequently, the exchange rate policy is not only deliberated from price competitiveness, but is also considered as the time-span effects of impact on domestic economics, and the linkage between global economies.