A study on time-varying quantile and its applications

This Thesis is the result of my Master Degree studies at the Graduate School of Economics, Getúlio Vargas Foundation, from January 2004 to August 2006. am indebted to my Thesis Advisor, Professor Luiz Renato Lima, who introduced me to the Econometrics' world. In this Thesis, we study time-varying quantile process and we develop two applications, which are presented here as Part and Part II. Each of these parts was transformed in paper. Both papers were submitted. Part shows that asymmetric persistence induces ARCH effects, but the LMARCH test has power against it. On the other hand, the test for asymmetric dynamics proposed by Koenker and Xiao (2004) has correct size under the presence of ARCH errors. These results suggest that the LM-ARCH and the Koenker-Xiao tests may be used in applied research as complementary tools. In the Part II, we compare four different Value-at-Risk (VaR) methodologies through Monte Cario experiments. Our results indicate that the method based on quantile regression with ARCH effect dominates other methods that require distributional assumption. In particular, we show that the non-robust method ologies have higher probability to predict VaRs with too many violations. We illustrate our findings with an empirical exercise in which we estimate VaR for returns of São Paulo stock exchange index, IBOVESPA, during periods of market turmoil. Our results indicate that the robust method based on quantile regression presents the least number of violations.

O Conselho Municipal de Desenvolvimento Sustentável (CMDS) e a gestão de recursos hídricos: um estudo na Bacia do Rio Itabapoana (RJ)

O objetivo desta dissertação é analisar a forma de atuação do CMDS, e sua contribuição para a gestão dos recursos hídricos nos cinco municípios do Rio de Janeiro pertencentes à bacia do rio Itabapoana. O presente estudo foi conduzido a partir de uma discussão teórica sobre os temas: desenvolvimento local, cidadania, desenvolvimento local com cidadania e gestão social. Posteriormente, foram realizadas entrevistas temáticas, baseadas no método não probabilístico, com uma amostra composta por 38 pessoas, entre conselheiros do CMDS (membros do poder público e sociedade civil organizada), técnico, consultores e gestores do Sebrae/RJ. No tratamento dos dados foi utilizada a análise de discurso. Foram identificados aspectos negativos e positivos no que diz respeito à atuação e funcionamento do Conselho nos municípios analisados. Mesmo assim, pode-se verificar que grande parte dos conselheiros tem experiência anterior em Conselhos e movimentos sociais, e que o Projeto Managé, por meio da atuação dos CMDS, ajudou a construir uma identidade territorial para a bacia e também despertou a necessidade de maior conscientização e preservação do meio ambiente. Pode-se concluir que a forma de atuação do CMDS depende da interação e do nível de comprometimento do poder público e da sociedade civil organizada. Portanto, as condições institucionais locais exercem importante influência nas formas de mobilização social e participação dos indivíduos, visto que o processo de gerenciamento de recursos hídricos da bacia encontra-se ainda em fase de construção

A democratização da política pública e o fortalecimento da cidadania. Conhecendo o projeto Casa Brasil : unidades Vitória e Vila Velha

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the Casa Brasil Project and its contribution for promoting actions related to citizenship in Vitoria and Vila Velha cities. The essay was led through a theoretical discussion about citizenship, public space, social participation and public politics. Thereafter thematic interviews based on a non-probabilistic method were done with seventeen people such as public power representatives, organized civilian society and community. The speech analysis was used for data treatment. Some negative and positive aspects referred to citizenship and public power were identified. The aim of the research was checking if there is any encouragement to a genuine and consciousness participation of the society for the structure and continuous citizenship practice. The Casa Brasil Project experience in Vitoria and Vila Velha demonstrates that its sustainability and effectiveness depend on how interacted and committed the strategic stakeholders are, since the condition of local institutions influences the model of social mobilization and individual participation. Besides, this essay shows it is necessary: to improve the citizen involvement ¿ by implementing the board of directors, which assures public participation in order to stimulate the community to take the unity control ¿ to grant democratic feature to the public power, and to increase citizenship.

Desenvolvimento sustentável e turismo: o caso lençóis maranheses

Tourism as an example of alternative for sustainable development in the Lençóis Maranhenses. The objective of this work is to analyze the prospects for sustainable development in tourism in the aforementioned region. An attempt is made to evaluate the five dimensions of sustainable - ecological, economic, social, space and cultural. The base for discussion is the information gathered from the people who actually live in the region. A type of the case study was built up. The research involved speaking with the people about the viability of tourism projects, not only with an eye on economic success, job creation and income for the region. There was also an attempt to tackle the issue of social and environment impact. Data was collected through verbal contact. A variety of people were interviewed, locals, businessmen, authorities, civil representatives and they spoke about the advantages and disadvantages of tourism as the saw it and as it affected them. Their answers and comments constitute the knowledge gleaned. The development of possible new strategies is the result of this work. Strategies that should be investigated by the local government/public administration. One such strategy would involve strengthening ties whit society and hoping that the improved dialogue would encourage sustainability. Another would mean improving interdepartmental contact to streamline the performance of public bodies so that development can be better planned and non-destructive.

Life Cycle Models, Heterogeneity of Initial Assets,and Wealth Inequality

Life cycle general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents have a very hard time reproducing the American wealth distribution. A common assumption made in this literature is that all young adults enter the economy with no initial assets. In this article, we relax this assumption – not supported by the data - and evaluate the ability of an otherwise standard life cycle model to account for the U.S. wealth inequality. The new feature of the model is that agents enter the economy with assets drawn from an initial distribution of assets, which is estimated using a non-parametric method applied to data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. We found that heterogeneity with respect to initial wealth is key for this class of models to replicate the data. According to our results, American inequality can be explained almost entirely by the fact that some individuals are lucky enough to be born into wealth, while others are born with few or no assets.