Elections and stock market volatility: evidence in OECD countries and developing countries

Este trabalho estuda se existe impacto na volatilidade dos mercados de ações em torno das eleições nacionais nos países da OCDE e nos países em Desenvolvimento. Ao mesmo tempo, pretende, através de variáveis explicativas, descobrir os fatores responsáveis por esse impacto. Foi descoberta evidência que o impacto das eleições na volatilidade dos mercados de ações é maior nos países em Desenvolvimento. Enquanto as eleições antecipadas, a mudança na orientação política e o tamanho da população foram os factores que explicaram o aumento da volatilidade nos países da OCDE, o nível democrático, número de partidos da coligação governamental e a idade dos mercados foram os factores explicativos para os países em Desenvolvimento.

Ideological changes and tax structure: Latin American countries during the nineties

Sabatini (2002) and Roberts and Wibbles (1999) Pointed Out That Voters in Latin American Countries are no Longer Choosing According to Their Ideological Preferences. Ashworth and Heyndels (2002) Showed That the Tax Choice In Oecd Countries Does not Follow the Ideological Pattern of Party Preferences. the Most Robust Result of This Work Shows That the Tax Choice in Latin American Countries Still Depends on This Ideological Preference. We Also Verified That Changes in the Tax Structure Depend on Changes Both in the Tax Burden and the Openness of the Economy

Financiamento para o subdesenvolvimento, o Brasil e o segundo consenso de Washington

While in the social and in the ethical realms the Cardoso administration was successful, its economic outcomes were frustrating. In this administration’s eight years the investment rate did not increase and income per capita growth lagged, while the public debt and the foreign debt increased substantially. This poor economic performance may be explained by three chained causes: a mistake in agenda setting, the adoption of the Second Washington Consensus, and the alienation of elites. The decision of setting high inflation as the major problem to be tackled instead of achieving equilibrium in foreign accounts represented a major macroeconomic mistake, which can be explained by the Second Washington Consensus. This consensus proposed in the 1990s that highly indebted countries should grow counting on foreign savings, although this is not the experience among OECD countries. The outcome was to evaluate the real, to increase artificially wages and consumption, so that instead of growth what we have been increased indebtedness. Why this flopped strategy was adopted? Rich countries’ interests are not difficult to guess. On the part of Brazil, the only explanation is Brazilian elites’ alienation in relation to the country’s national interest. As a final outcome, the Cardoso administration ends with another balance of payments crisis, which was empowered by the coming presidential elections. Yet, the solvency situation of the Brazilian economy have been improving since the 1999 successful floatation of the real, so that I believe that, adopted a policy that deepens fiscal adjustment, while lowers the interest rate, and avoids new evaluation of the real, the country will eventually be able to avoid default.

Are returns on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), FDI determinants?

Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) acquired an important role in the development process of the global economy. FDI inward stock was equivalent to an average of 32% of GDP for OECD countries in 2013. However, FDI affects a country’s Balance of Payments (BoP) in two ways: FDI flows are recorded in the BoP financial account while returns on FDI affect the BoP current account. Therefore, part of the positive contribution of inward FDI to a country on its financial account could be potentially offset by a negative contribution of FDI returns on the current account. The intent of this work is to complement the research on FDI determinants by introducing FDI returns as a variable in a gravity model where bilateral FDI outflows are the dependent variable. Moreover, using outward FDI flows as the dependent variable, the work allows looking at the behavior of Multinational Corporations (MNC) investing abroad. The results show that MNCs repatriate returns generating from the investments they make abroad. This is particularly true when high-income countries are involved: MNCs from high-income countries repatriate returns to their home countries from FDI made anywhere, while MNCs from middle-income countries repatriate returns from FDI in high-income countries. Repatriated returns are a relevant variable determining the value of FDI that a country makes in another country. The information on FDI returns is starting to become available to the public. This allows MNCs to sharpen their investment location decision models and national IPAs to better assess the two-fold BoP effects of promoting FDI.

Essays on health care reform, wealth inequality, and demography

This thesis contains three chapters. The first chapter uses a general equilibrium framework to simulate and compare the long run effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and of health care costs reduction policies on macroeconomic variables, government budget, and welfare of individuals. We found that all policies were able to reduce uninsured population, with the PPACA being more effective than cost reductions. The PPACA increased public deficit mainly due to the Medicaid expansion, forcing tax hikes. On the other hand, cost reductions alleviated the fiscal burden of public insurance, reducing public deficit and taxes. Regarding welfare effects, the PPACA as a whole and cost reductions are welfare improving. High welfare gains would be achieved if the U.S. medical costs followed the same trend of OECD countries. Besides, feasible cost reductions are more welfare improving than most of the PPACA components, proving to be a good alternative. The second chapter documents that 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 chapter, 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. 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. The third chapter documents that a common assumption adopted in life cycle general equilibrium models is that the population is stable at steady state, that is, its relative age distribution becomes constant over time. An open question is whether the demographic assumptions commonly adopted in these models in fact imply that the population becomes stable. In this chapter we prove the existence of a stable population in a demographic environment where both the age-specific mortality rates and the population growth rate are constant over time, the setup commonly adopted in life cycle general equilibrium models. Hence, the stability of the population do not need to be taken as assumption in these models.

Políticas de salvamento e risco bancário em período de crise

Esta tese analisa, entre 2005 e 2013, o impacto das políticas governamentais de resgate sobre o risco do setor bancário nos países da OCDE. Primeiro, em linha com a hipótese de moral hazard, verifica-se que instituições financeiras com expectativa elevada de bailout, assumem riscos mais elevados do que as demais. Segundo, constata-se que, em períodos normais, garantias de socorro às grandes instituições distorcem a competição no setor e incrementa o risco das demais. Durante a crise, entretanto, mostra-se que elevações na expectativa de resgate dos concorrentes de uma instituição, à medida que representa uma redução em sua chance de eventual socorro governamental, diminuem sua tomada de riscos. Adicionalmente, em período de crise também é evidenciado que: reduções na capacidade financeira dos países estão associadas a menor assunção de riscos; em média, o aumento na tomada de riscos é maior nos países com menor spread de Credit Default Swap.