Three essays on the sectoral aspects of economic policy.

Summary The objective underlying the three chapters that make up this thesis is to better understand the impact of public policies whose impacts differ across heterogeneous sectors. We apply this analysis to three types of public policies at the heart of contemporary macroeconomics: (i) environmental policy, (ii) development aid policy and (iii) twin deficit policy. Through these three chapters, we argue that the sectoral impacts of policies play a crucial role in the evaluation of policies and in the determination of the optimal policy. The first chapter focuses on the pollution tax. It provides a theoretical model that explains why there is a negative relationship between household income and their support for the pollution tax. In the second chapter, I study the macroeconomic impacts of a development aid policy and consider two sectors: the tradable goods sector (T-sector) and the non-tradable goods sector (N-sector). I consider two types of foreign aid: (i) aid distributed through lump sum transfers to households and (ii) aid to finance public investments. I study the impact of capital market liberalization on the optimal form and performance of development aid. The third chapter focuses on twin deficits: a current account deficit induced by a balanced budget deficit. The econometric analysis of the paper shows that countries with centralized wage bargaining have smaller twin deficits than others. This chapter also provides a theoretical model to explain these empirical results.