Essays In International Finance And Macroeconomics

This thesis consists of three essays in international finance and macroeconomics to study the link between money and economic activity.;The first essay, entitled Liquidity, Exchange Rates, and Business Cycles, presents a two-country, two-good, two-currency model to study the role of liquidity effects in exchange rate determination and the international transmission of economic fluctuations. The monetary authority\u27s injections of cash are funneled into the economy through financial markets. The asymmetry of economic agents\u27 access to the newly injected cash induces liquidity effects. The model provides an exchange rate equation which is different from the simple purchasing-power-parity law of exchange rate determination. Both monetary injections and real disturbances can lead to exchange rate fluctuations and comovements of interest rates, prices and output of the two economies. Whether the covariances of variables in the two countries are positive, negative, or zero depends critically upon the substitutability of the two consumption goods in consumers\u27 preferences.;The second essay, Capital Controls, Foreign Exchange Controls, and Liquidity, continues the study of liquidity effects. By using a similar model to that constructed in the first essay, this essay analyses the liquidity effects generated by restrictions on international financial markets. Taxes on international financial transactions induce redistribution of liquidity in international financial markets which results in comovements of macroeconomic aggregates in the two economies, fluctuations in exchange rates and interest rates, and changes in welfare of economic agents of each country.;The third essay, Imperfect Information, Money, and Economic Growth, presents an endogenous growth model with financial market imperfections to study the effects of money on economic growth, and to examine the role of informational imperfections in the determination of the equilibrium growth path. It is found that the economy will grow slower if there is imperfect information. Changes in money growth have qualitatively similar effects on the economies with and without private information. However, the economy with private information will be less responsive to monetary shocks. The results contradict the popular view that informational imperfections in credit markets or borrowing constraints tend to amplify the impacts of policy interventions

Inflation Taxation and Welfare with Externalities and Leisure

This paper examines how inflation taxation a ects resource allocation and welfare in a neoclassical growth model with leisure, a production externality and money in the utility function. Switching from consumption taxation to inflation taxation to finance government spending reduces real money balances relative to income, but increases consumption, labor, capital and output. The net welfare effect of this switch depends crucially on the strength of the externality and on the elasticity of intertemporal substitution: While it is always negative without the externality, it is likely to be positive with a strong externality and elastic intertemporal substitution.

Simple Monetary Policy Rules in an Open-Economy, Limited-Participation Model

The authors assess the stabilization properties of simple monetary policy rules within the context of a small open-economy model constructed around the limited-participation assumption and calibrated to salient features of the Canadian economy. By relying on limited participation as the main nominal friction that affects the artificial economy, the authors provide an important check of the robustness of the results obtained using alternative environments in the literature on monetary policy rules, most notably the now-standard "New Keynesian" paradigm that emphasizes rigidities in the price-setting mechanism. The authors' analysis identifies general principles to which a rule should adhere to possess favourable stabilization properties. The rule should direct monetary authorities to increase nominal interest rates significantly when lagged interest rates are already high. By contrast, upward pressures on output (and perhaps also on inflation) should lead to decreases in interest rates. Further, monetary policy should be essentially unconcerned with exchange rate movements. In addition, responding to future inflation, rather than the current rate, does not generate significant welfare improvements. While some of these principles are similar to those obtained using alternative environments, the recommendation that monetary policy should lower rates when output or inflation is pushing upward is more specific to limited-participation models. This recommendation is linked to the fact that, in such models, expected rises in inflation lead the financial system to contract aggregate loanable funds and push economic activity downward, thus embedding a negative correlation between inflationary and output pressures in the model economy. In that sense, the authors' analysis might be interpreted as the study of an economy in which financial markets have limited flexibility to react to shocks and how this limited flexibility impinges on the choice of a "good" monetary policy rule.

Big Data Measures of Environmental Concern

Environmental concern is a subjective state of society and researchers have typically relied on survey data to measure it. However, survey-based methods only capture a snapshot of it at the time and place the surveys were conducted. To overcome these problems, we develop an observable indicator that allows us to study environmental concern over time and across territories based on big data. The indicator composes of keyword groups that fit with the environmental concern measures revealed by a large-scale survey. We find that keywords associated with climate change, water pollution and waste management are the strongest predictors of environmental concern. To the best of our knowledge, our paper is the first to use online search data to capture subjective environmental concern

Outsourcing Tools for IT

Department of ComputingRefereed conference pape

Occult thoraco-abdominal injuries from an airbag and seatbelt

AbstractA combination of a seatbelt and airbags decreases the risk of injury for most body regions in motor vehicle crashes. Although the severity of injuries decreases, injuries still occur. We report a case of occult thoraco-abdominal trauma in a patient who was wearing a three-point seatbelt and had airbag protection. A 59-year-old man presented to the emergency department in shock after a motor vehicle accident. He was protected by a three-point seatbelt and airbag. Chest radiographs and focused assessment with sonography for trauma showed no abnormalities. However, computed tomography revealed multiple injuries in the chest and abdomen. This case report highlights occult thoraco-abdominal trauma in a victim protected by a seatbelt and airbag, which may be a pitfall for emergency physicians. Emergency physicians should understand the limitations of chest radiographs in trauma evaluation and carry out a complete evaluation of patients

The Effects of Independent Non-Executive Directors (INED) on Company Performance

This paper examines the influence of and relationship between independent non-executive directors (INEDs) and the performance of firms listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (SEHK). Many previous studies argue that INEDs can improve corporate governance and firm performance. However, research in this area is ongoing in different countries and stock exchanges and has produced inconsistent conclusions. The results of this study should help in reviewing the suitability of the current INED standards and whether they can be applied to different firm segments in Hong Kong. The paper aims to help policymakers/regulators determine whether further revision of the current INED policy is necessary. The results can be further investigated and applied to other emerging markets/regions worldwide and may be particularly suitable for regions with many family-controlled and state-owned enterprises

Polarized thermal radiation by layer-by-layer metallic emitters with sub-wavelength grating

Metallic thermal emitters consisting of two layers of differently structured nickel gratings on a homogeneous nickel layer are fabricated by soft lithography and studied for polarized thermal radiation. A thermal emitter in combination with a sub-wavelength grating shows a high extinction ratio, with a maximum value close to 5, in a wide mid-infrared range from 3.2 to 7.8 µm, as well as high emissivity up to 0.65 at a wavelength of 3.7µm. All measurements show good agreement with theoretical predictions. Numerical simulations reveal that a high electric field exists within the localized air space surrounded by the gratings and the intensified electric-field is only observed for the polarizations perpendicular to the top sub-wavelength grating. This result suggests how the emissivity of a metal can be selectively enhanced at a certain range of wavelengths for a given polarization