What to do till the doctor comes? Frank Capra e a Grande Depressão

Nenhum outro realizador a trabalhar em Hollywood durante os anos 30 do século XX alcançou maior notoriedade do que Frank Capra. A sua biografia, tão parecida com as histórias de rags to riches, parece coexistir com as narrativas ilustradas em alguns dos seus filmes mais perenes. No entanto, apesar de todo este sucesso, a carreira de Frank Capra seria relativamente curta e, sobretudo, quase exclusivamente associada à década da Grande Depressão. A elaboração deste trabalho tem por objetivo articular a história pessoal de Frank Capra com as histórias da Grande Depressão, utilizando os filmes que dirigiu durante essa década e, neste processo, tornar aparentes alguns dos motivos para o sucesso do realizador durante os anos 30.

The finance-welfare state nexus. ACES Cases No. 2013.1

At the height of the financial crisis, the Western welfare state prevented a repeat of the Great Depression. But there were also suggestions that social policy had contributed to the crisis, particularly by promoting households’ access to credit in pursuit of welfare goals. Others claim that it was the withdrawal of state welfare that led to the disaster. Against this background that motivated our interest, we propose a systematic way of assessing the relationship between financial market and public welfare provisions. We use structural vector auto-regression to establish the causal link and its direction. Two hypotheses about this relationship can be inferred from the literature. First, the notion that welfare states ‘decommodify’ livelihoods or that there is an equity-efficiency tradeoff would suggest that welfare states substitute to varying degrees for financial market offers of insurance and savings. By contrast, welfare states may support private interests selectively and/or help markets for households to function better; thus the nexus would be one of complementarity. Our empirical strategy is to spell out the causal mechanisms that can account for a substitutive or complementary relationship and then to see whether advanced econometric techniques find evidence for the existence of either of these mechanisms in six OECD countries. We find complementarity between public welfare (spending and tax subsidies) and life insurance markets for four out of our six countries, notably even for the United States. Substitution between welfare and finance is the more plausible interpretation for France and the Netherlands, which is surprising. Data availability constrains us from testing the implications for the welfare state contribution to the crisis directly but our findings suggest that the welfare state cannot generally be blamed for the financial crisis.

The Eurozone crisis and the erosion of democratic legitimacy: Lessons from the gold standard. ACES Cases No. 2013.3

This paper makes four propositions. First, it argues that the euro’s institutional design makes it function like the interwar gold exchange standard during periods of stress. Just like the gold exchange standard during the 1930s, the euro created a ‘core’ of surplus countries and a ‘periphery’ of deficit countries. The latter have to sacrifice their internal domestic economic equilibrium in order to restore their external equilibrium, and therefore have no choice but to respond to balance of payments crises by a series of deflationary spending, price and wage cuts. The paper’s second claim is that the euro’s institutional design and the EU’s response to its ‘sovereign debt crisis’ during 2010-13 deepened the recession in the Eurozone periphery, as EMU leaders focused almost exclusively on austerity measures and structural reforms and paid only lip service to the need to rebalance growth between North and South. As Barry Eichengreen argued in Golden Fetters, the rigidity of the gold standard contributed to the length and depth of the Great Depression during the 1930s, but also underscored the incompatibility of the system with legitimate national democratic government in places like Italy, Germany, and Spain, which is the basis for the paper’s third proposition: the euro crisis instigated a crisis of democratic government in Southern Europe underlining that democratic legitimacy still mainly resides within the borders of nation states. By adopting the euro, EMU member states gave up their ability to control major economic policy decisions, thereby damaging their domestic political legitimacy, which in turn dogged attempts to enact structural reforms. Evidence of the erosion of national democracy in the Eurozone periphery can be seen in the rise of anti-establishment parties, and the inability of traditional center-left and center-right parties to form stable governments and implement reforms. The paper’s fourth proposition is that the euro’s original design and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis further widened the existing democratic deficit in the European Union, as manifested in rising anti-EU and anti-euro sentiment, as well as openly Eurosceptic political movements, not just in the euro periphery, but also increasingly in the euro core.

Les coalitions politiques et l'orientation du changement économique et politique aux États-Unis : la Grande Dépression et la Grande Récession comparées.

Ce mémoire s’intéresse au concept de crise, économique et politique, comme source de changement idéologique et politique. Au travers de l’étude de l’austérité économique, il sera possible d’identifier des différences majeures entre deux épisodes de troubles économiques importants, la Grande Dépression et la Grande Récession. Alors que la Grande Dépression est caractérisée par une double crise, économique et politique, la Grande Récession, elle, demeure un choc essentiellement économique. L’absence de contagion dans le système politique explique la ténacité d’une idée comme l’austérité, de retour depuis la révolution néolibérale des années 80. L’austérité économique s’est adaptée et s’aligne maintenant aux intérêts d’une frange importante de la coalition démocrate. La persistance de l’allure des coalitions politiques depuis le dernier grand réalignement témoigne de l’absence de transformation majeure du mode d’action étatique, ce qui constitue une différence importante entre les deux crises.

The memoirs of Herbert Hoover.

v. 1. Years of adventure, 1874-1920 -- v. 2. The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920-1933 -- v. 3. The great depression, 1929-1941.

A magyar átalakulás és fejlődés néhány általánosítható elméleti tanulsága = Some generalizable theoretical lessons of the Hungarian transformation and development

A világgazdasági válság óta eltelt nyolc évtizedben Magyarországon számos rendszerváltozás ment végbe a gazdaságban és a politikában. Sokak szerint a szabadpiactól a szabadpiacig vezető kör bezárult, és ismét rendszerválság előtt állunk. Míg a jövő természetesen bizonytalanságokkal terhes, és így értelemszerűen nem kiszámítható, a múlt egyértelmű tanulsága az, hogy a közéletet végig formáló felzárkózási törekvés egészében sikertelennek bizonyult. Ennek alapja elemzésünk központi rejtélye egy régi fejlődéselméleti feladvány: miért van az, hogy Argentínához vagy újabban Olaszországhoz és Portugáliához hasonlóan a jó politika rossz eredményekkel jár(t), és fordítva? Miért szakadt el végletesen és történetileg is a gazdasági és a politikai ésszerűség egymástól? __________________ Hungary has undergone several changes of economic and political system in the eighty years since the Great Depression. According to many, the circle from market economy to market economy has closed and we face another systemic crisis. Although the future is naturally full of uncertainties and is not by its very nature predictable, the clear lesson from the past is that the effort to catch up, which shaped public life throughout, has been unsuccessful on the whole. The basis for this and the central riddle in this analysis is an old puzzle in development theory: how is it that good policies had bad results and vice versa, as was the case in Argentina, and recently in Italy and Portugal? Why did economic and political rationality part company for good, even in historical terms?

Unintended consequences of crisis management

This contribution attempts to decipher the largely unintended, still predictable consequences of crisis management in the global economy. In a series of improvised, case-bycase and unilaterally demand-focused measures, governments tried to extend the Keynesian arsenal to a system whose basic features are unlike those of the national economy. While the collapse of output and employment, on par with the Great Depression, could indeed be averted, conditions for the resumption of sustainable finance and growth have been undermined.

Les coalitions politiques et l'orientation du changement économique et politique aux États-Unis : la Grande Dépression et la Grande Récession comparées

Ce mémoire s’intéresse au concept de crise, économique et politique, comme source de changement idéologique et politique. Au travers de l’étude de l’austérité économique, il sera possible d’identifier des différences majeures entre deux épisodes de troubles économiques importants, la Grande Dépression et la Grande Récession. Alors que la Grande Dépression est caractérisée par une double crise, économique et politique, la Grande Récession, elle, demeure un choc essentiellement économique. L’absence de contagion dans le système politique explique la ténacité d’une idée comme l’austérité, de retour depuis la révolution néolibérale des années 80. L’austérité économique s’est adaptée et s’aligne maintenant aux intérêts d’une frange importante de la coalition démocrate. La persistance de l’allure des coalitions politiques depuis le dernier grand réalignement témoigne de l’absence de transformation majeure du mode d’action étatique, ce qui constitue une différence importante entre les deux crises.

Migrant women’s employment in paid reproductive work through the crisis: the case of Italy (2007-2012)

Paid reproductive work, especially in the case of cleaning and home-care for elderly people, is an important sector for foreign women in Italy. For this reason, since the beginning of the current economic crisis, scholars have wondered about the impact of the recession on migrant domestic workers. They have looked particularly at possible competition with Italian women entering the sector for lack of better alternatives. Our paper takes this discussion a step further by assessing the overall changes affecting migrant women in the Italian labour market, 2007-2012. We will look at how their position has been transformed, by taking both an ethnic perspective, in relation to Italian women, and a gender perspective, in relation to migrant men. By way of a conclusion, the argument will be made that there is a substantial lack of competition between Italian and foreign women in the care and domestic sector due to differences in their earnings, hours of work and activities.

A Sustainable Century? Genuine Savings in developing and developed countries, 1900-2000

This chapter traces the long-run development of Genuine Savings (GS) using a panel of eleven countries during the twentieth century. This panel covers a number of developed countries (Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France, the US, and Australia) as well as a set of resource-abundant countries in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico). These countries represent approximately 50 percent of the world’s output in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 1950, and include large economies and small open economies, and resource-rich and resource-scarce countries, thus allowing us to compare their historical experiences. Components of GS considered include physical and human capital as well as resource extraction and pollution damages. Generally, we find evidence of positive GS over the course of the twentieth century, although the two World Wars and the Great Depression left considerable marks. Also, we found striking differences between Latin American and developed countries when Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is included; this could be a signal of natural resource curse or technological gaps unnoticed in previous works.

As reações do mercado acionista e obrigacionista dos GIPSI às notícias da Troika durante o período de crise financeira: 2010-2013

A zona euro e mais concretamente o conjunto de países constituído por Grécia, Itália, Portugal, Espanha e Irlanda chamado de GIPSI, atravessam uma das maiores crises desde a Grande Depressão. De forma a ajudar estes países mais afetados, um conjunto de organizações internacionais (FMI/BCE/CE) apelidado de Troika, tem unido esforços para debelar as dificuldades de financiamento e criarem políticas de reforma com o objetivo de devolver a independência e potenciar o crescimento económico dos mesmos. As ações e comunicados destas organizações passaram assim a gozar de uma maior visibilidade e interesse por parte dos investidores. Tendo isso em conta, neste trabalho estudamos o impacto das notícias da Troika nos mercados acionista e obrigacionista dos GIPSI, com um maior foco no mercado português. Em Portugal não encontramos evidência de que as notícias diretamente relacionadas com as ações e comunicações da Troika têm efetivamente impactos significativos, quer no mercado acionista, quer no obrigacionista. No entanto, as notícias de carácter internacional sobre a crise, respeitantes aos outros países afetados, impactaram de forma significativa o PSI 20, especialmente quando estas foram boas, assim como outras notícias relativas a avaliações, anúncios de apoio ou críticas de outras organizações europeias e mundiais, bem como como de líderes de países intervenientes na ajuda aos países afetados e anúncios macroeconómicos, sendo que aqui esse impacto foi mais sentido nas más notícias. No mercado obrigacionista, voltamos a ter impactos significativos dos mesmos tipos de notícias juntando-se aqui as notícias relativas às medidas tomadas pelo Governo português e outros agentes governamentais. Os restantes mercados, Espanha e Grécia apresentaram impactos significativos no mercado acionista e obrigacionista, o que nos leva a confirmar estudos anteriores de que notícias relacionadas com a crise têm efeitos para além do país visado e impactam de forma significativa outros mercados, em especial os mais afetados.

Devaluation, competitiveness and new business formation in emerging countries

In September 2010, Brazil’s Finance Minister, Guido Mantega, used the term “currency war” with reference to monetary policies implemented by different countries to generate an artificial devaluation of their currency and achieve a cheaper, more competitive domestic economy that may be attractive to foreign investors. Similar cases have been documented since the 1930s Great Depression, when several countries abandoned the gold standard as backing for their currencies. More recently, a large-scale asset purchase by Japan’s Central Bank in 2013 was singled out as a strategy aimed at generating devaluation of the yen. This research uses statistics of new business formation density reported by Doing Business for 30 emerging countries in the period 2004-2011 to evaluate the impact of devaluation measured by the behavior of the real effective exchange rate (REER) on the rate of new business formation (NBF). It is determined how variables associated with competitiveness affect the relationship between devaluation and business formation. Results show that devaluation has a positive effect on NBF in the short term, which gets diluted in the long term. Countries with greater competitiveness have less dependence on devaluation to increase the number of businesses.

Three Essays in Empirical Asset Pricing

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 led to extraordinary government intervention in firms and markets. The scope and depth of government action rivaled that of the Great Depression. Many traded markets experienced dramatic declines in liquidity leading to the existence of conditions normally assumed to be promptly removed via the actions of profit seeking arbitrageurs. These extreme events motivate the three essays in this work. The first essay seeks and fails to find evidence of investor behavior consistent with the broad 'Too Big To Fail' policies enacted during the crisis by government agents. Only in limited circumstances, where government guarantees such as deposit insurance or U.S. Treasury lending lines already existed, did investors impart a premium to the debt security prices of firms under stress. The second essay introduces the Inflation Indexed Swap Basis (IIS Basis) in examining the large differences between cash and derivative markets based upon future U.S. inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI). It reports the consistent positive value of this measure as well as the very large positive values it reached in the fourth quarter of 2008 after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. It concludes that the IIS Basis continues to exist due to limitations in market liquidity and hedging alternatives. The third essay explores the methodology of performing debt based event studies utilizing credit default swaps (CDS). It provides practical implementation advice to researchers to address limited source data and/or small target firm sample size.

A economia de John Maynard Keynes

O objectivo principal desta tese é analisar a evolução das ideias e proposições teóricas da obra de John Maynard Keynes, enfatizando as suas propostas de politica económica com influência na ordem económica internacional. A hipótese primordial deste trabalho, numa abordagem pós-Keynesiana, é a defesa da mudança do pensamento económico de Keynes, de uma visão marshalliana compatível com o capitalismo do laissez-faire, para uma análise teórica inovadora dos problemas do capitalismo pós-grande depressão, nos anos 1930; The Economics of John Maynard Keynes ABSTRACT: The main objective of this article is to analyze the evolution of the ideas and theoretical propositions of the of the work of John Maynard Keynes. The underlying hypothesis of this work, in a post Keynesian approach, is the defence of change of economic thought of Keynes, a vision marshallian compatible with laissez-faire capitalism, for an innovative theoretical analysis of the problems of capitalism pós-great depression, in the years 1930.

Three essays on liquidity

Doutoramento em Gestão.