Termes de l'échange endogènes et cycles économiques réels : une application à la Côte-d'Ivoire

À l’aide d’un modèle de cycles réels, la présente étude vise à expliquer, de façon endogène, les fluctuations des termes de l’échange en Côte-d’Ivoire. Pour ce faire, nous cherchons principalement à répondre aux deux questions suivantes : les chocs d’offre et de demande sur le marché d’exportation suffisent-ils à expliquer les variations des termes de l’échange? Et quelle est leur importance relative dans la dynamique des termes de l’échange? Les résultats montrent que les deux chocs considérés expliquent bien la volatilité des termes de l’échange. Nous avons noté que ces deux sources d’impulsions ont un impact significatif sur les fluctuations économiques en Côte-d’Ivoire.

The Wage Rate and the Profit Rate in the Price of Production Equation: a New Solution to an Old Problem

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that, even if Marx's solution to the transformation problem can be modified, his basic concusions remain valid.

Distortionary Taxation and Labor Supply: Evidence from Canada.

This paper examines empirically the effects of distortionary taxation on labor supply using a general equilibrium framework. The long-term relations predicted by the model are derived and tested using Canadian data between 1966 and 1993. While the cointegrating predictions of the model without taxation are rejected, the ones of the model with labor taxation are not. Persistent labor tax rate increases appear to play an important role in the observed downward trend in hours worked.

The Transformation Problem : an Aleternative Solution with an Identical Aggregate Profit Rate in the Labor value and the Monetary Space.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that, even if Marx's solution to the transformation problem can be modified, his basic conclusions remain valid. the proposed alternative solution which is presented hare is based on the constraint of a common general profit rate in both spaces and a money wage level which will be determined simultaneously with prices.

On the Optimal Order of Natural Resource Use When the Capacity of the Inexhaustible Substitute is Limited.

Consider a general equilibrium framework where the marginal cost of extraction from several deposits of an exhaustible resource is constant in terms of an inexhaustible perfect substitute and differs between deposits. the instantaneous rate of production form the inexhaustible resource is subject to a capacity constraint.

The Effect of Public Spending on Consumption: Reconciling Theory and Evidence

Recent empirical evidence from vector autoregressions (VARs) suggests that public spending shocks increase (crowd in) private consumption. Standard general equilibrium models predict the opposite. We show that a standard real business cycle (RBC) model in which public spending is chosen optimally can rationalize the crowding-in effect documented in the VAR literature. When such a model is used as a data-generating process, a VAR estimated using the artificial data yields a positive consumption response to an increase in public spending, consistent with the empirical findings. This result holds regardless of whether private and public purchases are complements or substitutes.

Asset Pricing in a Production Economy with Chew–Dekel Preferences

In this paper we provide a thorough characterization of the asset returns implied by a simple general equilibrium production economy with Chew–Dekel risk preferences and convex capital adjustment costs. When households display levels of disappointment aversion consistent with the experimental evidence, a version of the model parameterized to match the volatility of output and consumption growth generates unconditional expected asset returns and price of risk in line with the historical data. For the model with Epstein–Zin preferences to generate similar statistics, the relative risk aversion coefficient needs to be about 55, two orders of magnitude higher than the available estimates. We argue that this is not surprising, given the limited risk imposed on agents by a reasonably calibrated stochastic growth model.

Essais en économie avec frictions financières

Les trois essais dans cette thèse étudient les implications des frictions financières, telles que les contraintes de collatérale ou de crédit, pour les décisions économiques des agents et leur impact sur les variables macro-économiques agrégées. Dans le premier chapitre "Financial Contracts and the Political Economy of Investor Protection" nous proposons une théorie du niveau de protection des investisseurs. Une faible protection des investisseurs implique un coût de financement externe plus élevé à cause des problèmes d'agence plus aigus entre les investisseurs et les entrepreneurs. À l'équilibre, ceci exclut les agents plus dépendants sur le financement externe de l'entrepreneuriat, ce qui augmente les profits des entrepreneurs qui restent actifs. Quand le niveau de la protection des investisseurs est choisi par un vote majoritaire, la théorie génère (i) une protection des investisseurs plus faible dans les économies avec plus grande inégalité dans les besoins de financement externe parmi les entrepreneurs, (ii) une dynamique non-monotone de l'output, (iii) améliorations (détériorations) de la protection des investisseurs suite à des ralentissements (accélérations) de l'output agrégé. L'évidence empirique donne un support à ces prédictions de la théorie. Dans le deuxième chapitre "Financial Frictions, Internal Capital Markets, and the Organization of Production", nous examinons comment la présence des frictions financières peut mener à la formation des conglomérats et des "business groups" diversifiées. Particulièrement, nous construisons un modèle d'équilibre général d'entrepreneuriat dans lequel les conglomérats émergent de façon endogène et substituent partiellement le marché du crédit imparfait. Nous montrons que ce modèle est capable d'expliquer quantitativement plusieurs faits stylisés concernant l'organisation de la production, les différences de productivité entre les firmes et les différences en présence des conglomérats entre les pays. Le troisième chapitre "Size and Productivity of Single-segment and Diversified Firms: Evidence from Canadian Manufacturing" étudie empiriquement la relation entre la taille, la productivité, et la structure organisationnelle d'une firme. Utilisant les micro-données sur les établissements manufacturiers canadiens, nous documentons plusieurs faits stylisés concernant la taille et la productivité totale des facteurs des établissements dans les conglomérats et dans les firmes non-diversifiées. Nous trouvons que les établissements dans les conglomérats sont en moyenne plus larges que leurs contreparties dans les firmes non-diversifiées, les petits établissements dans les conglomérats sont moins productifs que les établissements de taille similaire dans les firmes non-diversifiées, mais les larges établissements dans les conglomérats sont plus productifs que ceux de taille similaire dans les firmes non-diversifiées. Cette évidence est consistante avec réallocation interne efficiente des ressources au sein des conglomérats.

Economic crisis and the financial system amplification effect

A well informed and cautious financial system can improves the welfare outcome of an economy by driving lenders surplus to borrow-ers. Nevertheless in a crisis situation the financial system cautious behavior can become a crisis amplifier given that the credit approval conditions are hardly meet, so there could be a credit crunch even in a low interest rates environment. This paper illustrates the previous by developing a general equilibrium model where the collateral credit condition defines the prudential behavior of the financial sys-tem. This and some other conditions amplify the magnitude of a negative productivity shock.

Labour market, international trade, and unemployment in a less developed country

This paper constructs a trade general equilibrium model for a less developed country with three sectors. One is the informal and un-tradable sector characterized by áexible wages, while the other two sectors are tradable, export and import sectors. The model imposes a binding minimum wage over the unskilled labour and e¢ cient wage distortions on the skilled labour. Comparative statics is driven to analyze the e§ects on the labour market as consequence of opening the economy, raising the minimum wage and the introduction of an augmenting productivity in the export sector.

Poor people and risky business

We try to explain why economic conflicts and illegal business often take place in poor countries. We use the concept of subsistence level of consumption (d) and assume a regular concave utility function for consumption levels higher than d. For consumption levels lower than d utility is constant and equal to zero. Under this framework poor agents are risk-lovers. This result helps to explain why economic conflicts are more likely to appear in poor economies and why poor agents are more willing to undertake illegal business.

Poverty impacts of agricultural policy adjustments in an opening economy: the case of Colombia

We aim to contribute to the assessment of poverty impacts on the rural sector arising from agricultural policy adjustments in Colombia. For this we use an agriculture specialized static CGE model, jointly (sequentially) with a microsimulation model that allows for effective job relocation. Results indicate that the sectoral impact of the program implemented tends to be small and has considerable variability across crops. They also show that the highest impacts come from the irrigation and land improvements component of the program. Lastly, although it reduces poverty, poverty impacts are small and tend to concentrate in rural households toward the middle of the income distribution ladder.

Poverty impacts of increased openness and fiscal policies in a dollarized economy: a CGE-micro approach for Ecuador

We quantify the effects on poverty and income distribution in Ecuador of bilateral trade liberalization with the US and a budget-neutral value added tax increase which seeks to compensate tariff revenue losses. We stress the study of fiscal policies that the government could tap in order to compensate for tariff revenue loss. This is a very important issue for Ecuador because this country adopted the US dollar as its currency in 2000, forgiving the use of important policy instruments. To study these issues we combine a reduced-form micro household income and occupational choice model (using 2005/6 data from the Ecuadorian LSMS) with a standard single-country computable general equilibrium model (employing a 2004 SAM). We follow a sequential approach that simulates the full distributional impact of trade and tax policies. We find that the impact of these policy changes on extreme poverty and income distribution is small but positive.

The balassa-samuelson hypothesis and elderly migration

We present an Overlapping Generations Model with two final goods: tradable goods are produced with a standard Cobb-Douglas production function and non-tradable goods are produced with linear production function where the only factor is labor. We maintain the fundamental assumption of factor mobility between sectors so model is consistent with the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis. Given the general equilibrium structure of our model we can examine the effect of the saving rate on migration and non-tradable relative prices. Under this setting, we find that the elderly have incentives to migrate from economies where productivity is high to economies with low productivity because of the lower cost of living. In more general terms the elderly migration is likely to go from rich to poor countries. We also find that, for poor countries, the elderly migration has a positive effect in wages and capital accumulation.

The international economic crisis and the colombian economy

The purpose of this research is to provide an approximation to the likely effects of the crisis on the Colombian economy and to the effectiveness of policy response. For this, the most relevant transmission channels and policy measures are simulated in the setting of a static computable general equilibrium model (CGE). The results obtained are interesting in their own right and are in line with what could be expected given the information available on the behavior of the Colombian economy. Furthermore, they call into question the effectiveness of governmental intervention as judged by its intended countercyclical effects.