How aid supply responds to economic crises: A panel VAR approach

The strong interdependence between the developed and developing worlds surfaced with the recent economic downturn. Due to the global character of the economy, the downturn affected not only the North but also the South. In addition, the Official Development Assistance (ODA) is subject to a pro-cyclical trend in aid which falls when donors encounter recession. We attempt to answer the question of whether and how donors adjust aid budgets in response to various macroeconomic shocks. The main objective of the study is to explore the channels as well as behavioural consequences of unexpected financial shocks on aid budget adjustments in the short run. Crises are found to affect aid budgets and their trend through two channels: directly through lower revenues and indirectly by increasing fiscal costs through exchange rates and financial volatility. In addition, this relationship between aid and the donor economy is not solely economic as the donor's internal political orientation also plays an important role

Globalization and financial crisis : a dynamic approach

This dissertation investigates some of the outcomes of globalization, exploring the effects and transmission of shocks between countries. It consists of three essays interconnected by the topic of globalization and economic crises. The first essay studies one of the most prominent outcomes of globalization, global production markets, and their roles in transmitting shocks. A two-country, three-sector Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model with offshoring is proposed and simulated for an open economy, inspired by the paper of Bergin P. & Feenstra R. & Hanson G., (2011) ‘Volatility due to offshoring: Theory and evidence’, Journal of International Economics, vol. 85, no 2, 163-173. The model implements two country-specific sectors and a common multinational sector with home and foreign producers where domestic multinational producers can reallocate production abroad. It is found that offshoring has generally positive effects for the home country, raising output and mitigating inflation, and these favorable effects are amplified by the ‘export’ of volatility that comes along. However, there exists a threshold beyond which the effects of offshoring become negative for the domestic economy. The study also establishes an interest rates channel of offshoring. The second essay aims at showing that production reallocation is a substantial phenomenon within the European Union and studies its dynamics. The extensive and intensive margins on import, export and labor are estimated, revealing that offshoring is a channel of adjustment to shocks in Europe. The DSGE model is calibrated to fit Western and Central European data. Simulations confirm most of the qualitative and behavioral findings from the first essay; globally, offshoring amplifies the transmission of economic shocks across borders. The results reveal the existence in the European context of an optimal level of offshoring for which volatility is minimal. Offshoring is also found important for the labor market, as it contributes to job creation at home and abroad, but also to maintaining the cross-country wage gap. The third essay tackles the issue of the effects of globalization spillovers from the developed world to developing countries, by addressing the challenges of international aid in times of financial crisis. In the presence of crisis, developing countries rely more crucially on aid, whereas developed countries reduce aid volumes. This study designs a theoretical framework of international aid provision based on a consumption model where donors consume international aid indirectly. The panel vector autoregression (PVAR) analysis is conducted from the yet unexplored standpoint of Official Development Assistance donors, and exposes the financial sources of aid volatility in the context of crisis. The main finding is that crises affect aid budgets and their trends. Financial volatility is found to decrease aid and to introduce some uncertainty to aid through fluctuations of its budget. The analysis establishes evidence that aid decisions are not purely economic, but also determined by internal political factors of donor countries: center parties appear more driven by economic determinants, while left and right-wing parties act in accordance with their ideological views.DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (HSS

Intra-provincial inequalities and economic growth in China

This paper approaches the problem of inequalities in China. It is specifically focused on analyzing the effects of intra-provincial disparities on the development of the 28 mainland provinces in China. Intra-provincial inequalities, as measured by the Theil index, seem positively related to growth, albeit the results are only convincing for the coastal provinces. A case-by-case analysis, however, suggests highly diversified patterns, including linear or an inverted U-shape for the fastest growing coastal provinces and virtually no relationship for the majority of regions. The results corroborate some questions raised earlier about actual policy-making standards in China.Inequality Economic growth Theil index China

Neural network modelling of the influence of channelopathies on reflex visual attention

This paper introduces a model of Emergent Visual Attention in presence of calcium channelopathy (EVAC). By modelling channelopathy, EVAC constitutes an effort towards identifying the possible causes of autism. The network structure embodies the dual pathways model of cortical processing of visual input, with reflex attention as an emergent property of neural interactions. EVAC extends existing work by introducing attention shift in a larger-scale network and applying a phenomenological model of channelopathy. In presence of a distractor, the channelopathic network’s rate of failure to shift attention is lower than the control network’s, but overall, the control network exhibits a lower classification error rate. The simulation results also show differences in task-relative reaction times between control and channelopathic networks. The attention shift timings inferred from the model are consistent with studies of attention shift in autistic children

Neural network modelling of the influence of channelopathies on reflex visual attention

This paper introduces a model of Emergent Visual Attention in presence of calcium channelopathy (EVAC). By modelling channelopathy, EVAC constitutes an effort towards identifying the possible causes of autism. The network structure embodies the dual pathways model of cortical processing of visual input, with reflex attention as an emergent property of neural interactions. EVAC extends existing work by introducing attention shift in a larger-scale network and applying a phenomenological model of channelopathy. In presence of a distractor, the channelopathic network’s rate of failure to shift attention is lower than the control network’s, but overall, the control network exhibits a lower classification error rate. The simulation results also show differences in task-relative reaction times between control and channelopathic networks. The attention shift timings inferred from the model are consistent with studies of attention shift in autistic children