Three essays in macro-finance, international economics and macro-econometrics

This thesis brings new evidence on different strands of the literature in macro-finance, international economics and macroeconometrics. The first two chapters combine both theoretical models and empirical techniques to deepen the analysis of important economic phenomena such as the effects of economic policy uncertainty on financial markets, and convergence between emerging market economies and advanced economies on these markets. The third chapter of the thesis, which is co-authored with Hafedh Bouakez, contributes to the literature on the identification of news shocks about future productivity.  In the first chapter, I study the effect of monetary and fiscal policy uncertainty on nominal U.S. government bond yields and premiums. I use a New-Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model featuring recursive preferences, and both real and nominal rigidities. Policy uncertainty in the DSGE model is defined as a mean-preserving spread of the policy shock distributions. My results show that: (i) When the economy is subject to unpredictable shocks to the volatility of policy instruments, the level of the median yield curve is lower, its slope increases and risk premiums decrease relative to an economy with no stochastic volatility. This negative effect on the level of yields and premiums is due to the asymmetric impact of positive versus negative shocks; (ii) A typical policy risk shock increases yields at all maturities. This is because the fall in yields triggered by higher demand for bonds by households, in order to hedge against higher predicted consumption volatility, is outweighed by the increase in yields due to higher inflation risk premiums. Finally, I use several empirical measures economic policy uncertainty in a structural VAR model to show that the above effects of policy risk shocks on yields are consistent empirical evidence.  Chapter 2 looks at the market for government bonds in 12 advanced economies and 8 emerging market economies, during the period 1999-2012, and consider the question of whether or not there has been any convergence of risk between emerging market and advanced economies. I distinguish between default risk and other types of risk, such as inflation, liquidity and exchange rate risk. I make the theoretical case that forward risk premium differentials can be used to distinguish default risk and other risks. I then construct forward risk premium differentials and use these to make the empirical case that there has been little convergence associated with the other types of risk. I also show that differences in countries' macroeconomic fundamentals and political risk play an important role in explaining the large "non-default" risk differentials observed between emerging and advanced economies.  Chapter 3 proposes a novel strategy to identify anticipated and unanticipated technology shocks, which leads to results that are consistent with the predictions of conventional new-Keynesian models. It shows that the failure of many empirical studies to generate consistent responses to these shocks is due to impurities in the available TFP series, which lead to an incorrect identification of unanticipated technology shocks---whose estimated effects are inconsistent with the interpretation of these disturbances as supply shocks. This, in turn, contaminates the identification of news shocks. My co-author, Hafedh Bouakez, and I propose an agnostic identification strategy that allows TFP to be affected by both technological and non-technological shocks, and identifies unanticipated technology shocks via sign restrictions on the response of inflation. The results show that the effects of both surprise TFP shocks and news shocks are generally consistent with the predictions of standard new-Keynesian models. In particular, the inflation puzzle documented in previous studies vanishes under the novel empirical strategy.

Keyphrases: Economic policy uncertainty, Yield curve, Stochastic volatility, Recursive preferences, Structural VAR, Risk premiums, Emerging Markets, Convergence, Political risk, Identification, News shocks, Sign restrictions, Technology, Total factor productivity, Convergence