KEMPF Hubert

This thesis presents work on low economic growth, low inflation and low interest rates in advanced economies. Chapter 1 presents the pro-competitive effects of trade on prices, productivity and firm margins. Openness to global trade implies a larger market and greater competition among firms, which in turn leads to lower inflation and higher average productivity. Chapter 2 examines the role of market power in the transmission channels of monetary policy. A high level of market power would mitigate the effects of monetary policy and relax financial constraints. In chapter 3, positive supply shocks under zero policy rates generate divergent results between theory and empirical analysis. Specifically, in contrast to the recessionary effects of supply shocks at zero policy interest rates (ZLB) predicted by the theoretical model, the empirical analysis does not produce these expected results. The fourth chapter constructs different indicators of uncertainty at the macroeconomic level and studies how uncertainty affects economic activity. Uncertainty negatively affects economic activity. However, the scope of macroeconomic analysis is limited by a potential endogeneity problem. Chapter 5 addresses this problem through the analysis of firm-level uncertainty using business survey data. The measure of uncertainty calculated with the firms' forecast errors significantly affects activity. However, their effect varies with the sign of the error. An underperformance of the forecast significantly reduces activity, while the opposite situation has a small effect. To summarize, the first two chapters deal with inflation and market power as explanations for the low inflation and low policy impact. Chapter 3 assesses the consequences of the zero policy rate environment. The last two chapters assess the role of uncertainty at the macro and micro levels in explaining low growth.

The first chapter analyzes the impact of central clearing of swaps, which has been mandatory since 2013, on the derivatives activity of U.S. banks. A portion of treated banks, i.e., banks that are not eligible for the "end-user exception," reallocate their portfolios by substituting OTC interest rate options for OTC interest rate swaps. This suggests that these banks may be engaging in regulatory arbitrage. The second chapter incorporates a natural interest rate with a stochastic trend into a New Keynesian model and studies how this changes optimal monetary policy. It shows that systematic increases in the optimal inflation rate are justified in response to negative shocks to the long-run level of the natural rate, once it falls below 1 per cent. Nevertheless, a rule that targets a constant price level continues to provide a good approximation of optimal policy as long as the long-run level of the natural rate remains positive. The third chapter studies the link between microeconomic uncertainty, defined as the dispersion of idiosyncratic productivity levels, and the allocation of credit among firms. It analyzes the equilibrium of a secured debt market where banks and financial investors interact in the presence of adverse selection and signaling. The model predicts that an increase in micro uncertainty can generate a change in the information regime and result in a credit crunch. In this case, high micro uncertainty restores the optimal allocation, as banks only finance good quality projects.

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The crisis opened by covid-19 in the first half of 2020 makes the institutional fragility of the euro zone more obvious. The principles on which the Maastricht Treaty is based, already undermined by the sovereign debt crisis, are showing their inadequacies. The absence of a common budgetary capacity once again forces the ECB to monetize deficits and calls into question its mandate. Faced with this situation, the article argues for the establishment of a European debt issuance mechanism, assumed and managed by the European Commission. Such an option is preferable to the mutualization of national debts, consolidates European construction and increases the international role of the euro.

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This thesis focuses on the transformations brought by European integration to a wide range of public policy issues such as education, working conditions, wages or relocation. To this end, theoretical and empirical methods are used, including the analysis of large databases at the micro level. Business cycles and education are two important elements in understanding labor mobility in Europe. The first chapter proposes a two-country overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents and economic fluctuations to reassess the importance of labor mobility as an adjustment mechanism in a currency area. He shows that, with mobile agents, asymmetric short-term shocks lead to a general increase in the skill level of workers. Indeed, in a depressed economy, the possibility of migrating is a paying option that reinforces the incentives to educate oneself. Some of the assumptions and results of the theoretical model are confirmed empirically. A simulation illustrates some of the properties of the model, such as the persistence of cyclical shocks and the trade-off between increasing skill levels and increasing migration flows. Other effects of worker mobility are developed in the second chapter. Although the EU enlargements in 2004 and 2007 resulted in an instantaneous removal of trade barriers, Western European labor markets were only gradually opened to Eastern European workers. We use this lag to suggest that the wave of migration that followed this opening reduced relocation to the West. Indeed, it became easier to employ low-skilled Eastern European workers. The third chapter focuses on the consequences of European enlargement for the new member states. We use a new worker-level database of nine Central and Eastern European countries to explore the effects of the trade liberalization that accompanied integration on wages and working conditions. Our results show a decline in wages and a deterioration in working conditions, which are amplified by the erosion of protective labor market institutions.

What is a monetary union? Can we define "good" institutions and "good" policies for such a union? How do economic policies fit together, and what problems does a monetary union face that might challenge its viability? This book seeks to answer these questions by drawing on recent developments in research and by developing an original conception of monetary union.

There is a consensus that the severity of shocks to oil markets is declining, as is the dependence of developed economies on these shocks. Developed countries are generally energy importers, and the effect of oil shocks on oil-exporting countries may be different, especially if they are countries whose major export is oil or oil products. In addition, the commodity export orientation may change the relative performance of econometric models that are typically used for forecasting. The thesis studies and develops models for structural analysis and short-term forecasting of an oil exporting economy where Russian data are used for all empirical applications. The first chapter is devoted to the construction of a DSGE model for a commodity exporting country. The DSGE model is estimated by Bayesian methods. We find that despite the significant impact on GDP of oil shocks, business cycles in Russia are mainly domestic in origin. The second chapter examines how Bayesian methods can be applied to forecasts using a BVAR model. The third chapter applies these techniques and compares the performance of a group of non-structural models (univariate and multivariate) to forecast a set of Russian macroeconomic indicators. In the fourth chapter, forecasting focused on structural multivariate (DSGE) and nonstructural (BVAR) models. The fifth chapter quantifies the effect of different types of oil shocks on several Russian macroeconomic variables.

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The three chapters of this thesis aim to contribute to a better understanding of how unconventional policies affect asset prices. They also empirically revisit the question of the impact of supply on asset prices, and more generally the limits imposed on arbitrage, the frictions in portfolio reallocation. Each chapter presents new data to quantify the mechanisms at work in the case of the Eurosystem's asset purchase program (APP). Chapter 1 proposes a simple portfolio model to think about unconventional measures in a coherent framework. Empirical exercises confirm the existence of several price transmission channels and assess the impact of the APP. Chapter 2 sheds new light on the portfolio rebalancing channel. The high frictions associated with reallocation, the high demand for "preferred habitat" and the low level of substitutability between assets allow for price impact, while possibly limiting spillovers to the economy. Chapter 3 suggests that the effet of securities purchases also if not primarily involves increasing the cost of borrowing these securities, which has implications for the dispersion of short-term money market rates and could make it difficult in the future to transmit conventional monetary policy if rates once considered risk-free and controllable by the central bank could not be controlled as precisely as before.

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The financial crisis of 2009 has reignited the debate between the classical and Keynesians regarding the role of finance in the business cycle. This thesis studies the macroeconomic consequences of credit market imperfections and quantifies their impact on the labor market. The interaction between unemployment and financial frictions is based on the hypothesis that job vacancies are financed by external funds which are more expensive than internal financing, due to the impact of asymmetric information on the credit market. It is then shown, with the help of a DSGE model calibrated on US data, that a negative financial shock, i.e. a shock that increases the risk premium on the credit market or a shock that deteriorates the balance sheet of entrepreneurs, significantly reduces borrowing capacity, and, consequently, job creation decreases especially. Moreover, an uncertainty shock causes an increase in the unemployment rate and makes this increase more persistent during a crisis. This result is confirmed by empirical evidence that consisted in estimating a Bayesian VAR model, where real and financial labor market variables.

We study the relationship between the distribution of individuals' attributes over the pop-ulation and the extent of risk sharing in a risky environment. We consider a society where individuals voluntarily form risk-sharing groups in the absence of financial markets. We obtain a partition of society into distinct coalitions leading to partial risk sharing. When individuals differ only with respect to risk, the partition is homophily-based: the less risky agents congreg-ate together and reject more risky ones into other coalitions. The distribution of risk affects the number and size of these coalitions. It turns out that individuals may pay a lower risk premium in more risky societies. We show that a higher heterogeneity in risk leads to a lower degree of partial risk sharing. The case of heterogenous risk aversion generates similar results. The empirical evidence on partial risk sharing can be understood when the endogenous partition of society into risk-sharing coalitions is taken into account.

This paper assesses the effects of the orderly liquidation of a failing bank and the ex post provision of deposit insurance on the prospect of bank runs. Assuming that the public institutions in charge of these policies lack commitment power, these interventions, both individually and jointly, are chosen and undertaken ex post. The costs of liquidation and redistribution across heterogeneous households play key roles in these decisions. If investment is sufficiently illiquid, a credible liquidation policy will deter runs. Despite the lack of commitment, deposit insurance, funded by an ex post tax scheme, will be provided unless it requires a (socially) undesirable redistribution of consumption that outweighs insurance gains. If taxes are set optimally ex post, runs are prevented by deposit insurance without costly liquidation. If not, a combination of the two policies will prevent runs.

Ogawa (Int Tax Public Financ 20(3):474–484, 2013) discusses the analysis of Kempf and Rota-Graziosi (J Public Econ 94(9–10):768–776, 2010a) by taking into account capital ownership in the government’s objective functions. He establishes that the unique subgame perfect Nash equilibrium (SPNE) of the endogenous timing game corresponds to the simultaneous Nash equilibrium. This result contrasts with Kempf and Rota-Graziosi (J Public Econ 94(9–10):768–776, 2010a) who conclude to the existence of two Stackelberg outcomes at the SPNEs. Highlighting the role of plain complementarity or substitutability, we obtain conditions under which leadership still emerges at the equilibrium of the endogenous timing game when capital ownership is considered. Numerical simulations confirm this finding and display a case where plain properties are not monotone and a well-identified Stackelberg outcome is the SPNE.

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This paper studies the effects of monetary policy in the presence of debt spillovers within a monetary union. When capital markets are integrated, the fiscal policy of any member country will generally influence equilibrium wages and interest rates across the whole union. We ask whether there exists a monetary policy which can offset these spillovers. Within a general class of monetary policy rules, there does not exist one that completely insulates agents in one region from fiscal policy in the other. These debt spillovers will affect welfare through two channels: intertemporal efficiency and redistribution.

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This dissertation is devoted to the analysis of public debt sustainability using an ad hoc fiscal reaction function, proposed by Stefan Collignon (Collignon, 2012) to describe the Stability and Growth Pact framework. This reaction function relates, in the form of an error correction model (ECM), the variation in the primary public balance to deviations of the total deficit and public debt from respective deficit and public debt targets. In this framework, public debt sustainability is analyzed as the stability and convergence conditions of a system of differential equations comprising an accounting equation representing the government's budget constraint and a behavioral equation describing the budgetary response to a deviation from the deficit and public debt targets. The debt is said to be "sustainable" if there are conditions on the parameters of this reaction function such that the system is stable and if these conditions are satisfied. We propose to take this simple two-equation model, to re-estimate the fiscal reaction function for a sample of EU and Eurozone countries, and then to substitute the long-term interest rate, which has been considered exogenous until now, with a function modeling the risk premium associated with public debt, to take into account its effect on stability conditions. We then estimate this risk premium relationship in order to produce alternative tests to those initially proposed by Collignon. The results obtained are inconclusive, but we nevertheless propose to derive sustainability tests, for methodological and indicative purposes. Finally, in a last theoretical part, an extension of this three-equation model is also presented, where this time the long-term real interest rate is directly endogenized, by introducing a third reaction function supposed to represent the reaction of financial markets to public debt.

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This paper offers a framework to study strategic interactions between private players, national fiscal authorities and a common central bank in monetary unions. We establish general conditions, in terms of restrictions on spillover effects of actions by private and public players, under which games that differ in the degree of cooperation and commitment can admit the same equilibrium outcome. We use these conditions to characterize benchmark results on the irrelevance of cooperation and commitment established in recent literature. Moreover, we show for a general setting, in which the benchmark results do not apply, that gains from fiscal cooperation depend on the number of countries and increase as this number gets larger.

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In this paper we set up a political economy model of a two-country world economy, where an international agreement on the provisions of public goods generating cross-border externalities, such as environment protection, subject to feasibility, efficiency and equity constraints, has to be negotiated by two elected national delegates. We prove that any international agreement involves higher public good provisions (through higher contributions in both countries) than in the case of no-agreement. If feasible, an IA may generate losers in either country. Under an equal tax rate rule, an international agreement may or may not be reached, unlike under an equal gain rule. Turning to the election stage, depending on the type of equity rule imposed on the IA, the choice of delegates depends crucially on distributive characteristics, both between and within countries: this is due to the struggle by electorates to transfer the tax burden to the other country's taxpayers.

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While the definition of the public budget constraint does not seem to be controversial, the research focus of this thesis is the speed at which states decide to comply with this constraint. The hypothesis is that the speed of adjustment is crucial in the overall evaluation of fiscal policy as a countercyclical instrument. More specifically, we seek to answer three questions: (i) historically, how quickly have governments resolved their fiscal imbalances? (ii) what are the effects of different fiscal stimulus packages according to the speed of adjustment and their composition? (iii) how does the duration of an accommodating monetary policy influence the above results? Chapter 1 shows that the criticism of econometric tests of sustainability is not insurmountable. We try to characterize the degree of persistence of fiscal imbalances using a fractional approach, which allows us to classify countries according to the reaction functions of their fiscal authorities. Chapter 2 proposes to assess the effects of post-recovery adjustments using a general equilibrium model. Regardless of the fiscal instrument chosen for the stimulus, an acceleration of the adjustment has a negative effect on output in the medium run. Chapter 3 assesses the policy mix in terms of the timing of fiscal adjustments after the stimulus, relative to the length of the zero interest rate period. An unstable regime of excessive consolidation emerges when the commitment to fiscal adjustment is very strong, irrespective of the central bank's behavior toward inflation.

The current difficulties in the euro zone have rekindled discussions about the governance of the euro zone and the desirability of a fiscal union, i.e., a set of collective fiscal rules, in Europe. In this article, we recall that the European Union already has a fiscal union. We establish a simple typology of fiscal unions and we emphasize one of the fundamental dilemmas of choice, namely the simultaneous management of natural idiosyncratic shocks and opportunistic behavior. We analyze the major shortcomings of the European monetary construct and set out five fundamental principles on which to build fiscal federalism in Europe and ensure the sustainability of the European currency.

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Financial globalization allows for the mobility of capital flows around the world, which, according to theoretical studies, can be offset by the shortage of capital in less developed countries. On the other hand, the growth of emerging countries is more volatile after their financial opening and they have not received as much capital as expected. To explain these paradoxical phenomena, three models are built around financial development, financial openness, and growth or capital flows. The first model incorporates the operation of monitoring in a nested generation model. Financial development can be measured by comparing the outcome of the model with and without financial imperfections. The impact of financial development on growth has two dimensions. The lack of financial development reduces effective productivity and worsens the credit constraint. The evolution of the two dimensions is different and not monotonic. The conditions of equilibrium in autarky and in openness are different. The two dimensions of financial development are then considered in a small economy model. Multiple equilibria exist in openness and there is a threshold effect. This explains specific consequences of financial openness to emerging countries. In the third model, financial development and financial openness together determine capital flows. Openness does not ensure the gain of capital inflows. The possibility of capital outflow is increased if the domestic financial sector is less developed.

This thesis contributes four essays to the literature on international migrant remittances, using a macroeconomic approach. The first essay focuses on the macroeconomic determinants of migrant remittances. This first essay empirically examines the response of remittances to economic conditions in the migrants' host country and in the migrants' home country, using a V AR panel approach. This empirical study uses annual data from 14 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The other three essays focus on the macroeconomic effects of migrant remittances on the economies of developing countries. The second essay quantitatively assesses the contribution of remittance shocks to macroeconomic fluctuations using a Real Business Cycle (RBC) model. The model used is a general stochastic dynamic equilibrium model with three goods (non-traded goods, exportable goods and importable goods) calibrated to the Senegalese economy. The third essay examines the effect of migrant remittances on the real exchange rate in a two-sector (traded and non-traded goods) small open economy monetary model, and conducts a corresponding empirical study on annual data for the CFA Franc zone countries. The fourth essay empirically studies the effect of migrant remittances on growth volatility with a particular focus on the interaction between migrant remittances and financial development. This empirical study is conducted using annual data on 75 developing countries.

This thesis studies the performance of the labor market in an economy that is likely to have several equilibria, and the implications of such a configuration for economic policy. It consists of four essays, each dealing with a specific aspect of this problem. First, the econometric analysis of time series of unemployment rates in some OECD countries, allowing in particular the identification of regime changes and their characteristics, provides significant evidence in support of the hypothesis of a multiplicity of equilibria. Second, we study the effects of the introduction of a mandatory minimum wage and of an increase in the minimum wage in a static model of imperfect competition with wage bargaining at the firm level, the labor input being heterogeneous. If the increase in the minimum wage is unfavorable to employment, the introduction of a minimum wage in the presence of a multiplicity of equilibria allows the elimination of the Pareto-inferior equilibrium. Third, we also study the implications of the existence of multiple equilibria for economic policies, due to the alteration of the dynamic properties of the economy, through the complete analysis of a dynamic model of imperfect competition with individual wage bargaining and matching frictions in the labor market. Finally, we show through the experimental tool to what extent the introduction of a so-called solar task variable can be a source of coordination failure and inefficiency in an economy with two Pareto-ordered equilibria.

This thesis focuses on the competition between means of payment. First, we present a prospecting model to recover Tooke's (1844) thesis: money is used in transactions between entrepreneurs and wage earners. credit is used in transactions between entrepreneurs. Subsequently, we present a model in which agents can use credit or money, although the use of credit is subject to fallible technology. Wider access to credit does not necessarily imply welfare improvement as it may make risk sharing less efficient. We perform a quantitative analysis using data from the United States and show that the expansion of credit access in recent years has not led to welfare improvement. Second, we address a seemingly paradoxical finding: national currencies remain the primary medium of exchange in most economies, despite the availability of less inflationary currencies. We show that, if banks have limited debt enforcement power, the inflation of the currency in which debts are denominated can operate as a commitment device for borrowers so that, in equilibrium, agents prefer the more inflationary currency, even in the absence of transactions costs to use the competing currency. Finally, we study the effect of inflation and financial system efficiency on growth and welfare. Our formalization of the monetary exchange of the innovation market allows us to estimate a broader cost of inflation than previous estimates.

This thesis investigates the impact of the number of children and social interactions on mothers' labor supply. To determine whether the link between number of children and mothers' labor supply is causal, we use two random events that affect the number of children: having two elders of the same sex and twin births of rank two. The results suggest that having more than two children decreases mothers' labor force participation by 20 points and the number of hours worked by employed mothers by 2 hours per week. We then analyze how the institutional context alters the effect of the number of children on mothers' labor force participation. First, we find that before July 1994, when the Allocation parentale d'éducation was intended for parents with three or more children, having more than two children significantly reduced mothers' labor force participation. After the extension of the system to mothers of two children, this is no longer the case and the negative effect of having a second child on their activity is increased. Second, our results indicate that in departments where access to kindergarten for two-year-olds is low, having more than two children has a significantly negative effect on the activity of mothers. On the contrary, the effect is insignificant in departments where access is high. Finally, we examine the effect of neighborhood social interactions on mothers' activity. By mobilizing different sources of exogenous variation in the activity of close neighbors, we find that the activity of neighbors positively affects the individual participation of a mother.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the impact of regional integration agreements on economic development and growth. The development of the subject is done from the analytical framework integrating the theories of endogenous growth and the new geographical economy. We show that geographical factors (natural endowments and those resulting from the spatial interaction between agents through agglomeration economies) influence development. We identify spatial disparities within and between regional integration areas. We analyze convergence in the WAEMU and ECOWAS zones and conclude that there is a convergence of per capita product in the WAEMU zone, as in the monetary zones, but not in ECOWAS. Using theoretical models that integrate different accumulation mechanisms that make comparative advantages endogenous, we show that South-South regional agreements are superior to North-South agreements. We also show that regional agreements between Southern countries allow them to strengthen their economic growth, to converge and to reduce their backwardness compared to Northern countries. We show that a better infrastructure endowment of a member of the agreement allows it to strengthen its industrial growth as integration deepens. Taxation helps finance this public infrastructure, which increases the rate of return on capital. Its negative effects on the location of firms only appear above a certain level of taxation. The intensity of industrial development depends on the quality of public spending. '.

Through debt contracts, interbank deposits via the markets, or private clearing systems, banks are integrated into true interbank networks. These networks allow banks to manage their liquidity in such a way as to reduce the amount of idle reserves in order to increase the amount of investments. However, the topology - in the sense of architecture - of interbank networks is not neutral as much for the management of liquidity risk as for the question of bankruptcy risk. In fact, in a Diamond and Dybviq (1983) model extended to several banks, it can be shown that the topology influences the capacity of the different networks to distribute liquidity efficiently, i.e., in such a way as to allow participants to face the sequential liquidity service constraint with a minimal level of reserves while protecting themselves from the risk of a run on the bank. To achieve this, the network must exhibit strict topological properties. The speed of liquidity distribution and the rate of decrease of the number of liquid banks vary according to the topology involved. Moreover, the interbank network can be a propagation channel capable of transforming a localized shock in the system into a systemic crisis. The domino effect appears through the cascade of payments linking the participants that the network represents. The speed of propagation of the illiquidity crisis and the number of failed institutions are functions of the distance between the stakeholders in the network, and the degrees of centrality and connectivity of the network.

This thesis addresses a logically fundamental question, although not much addressed by collective choice theories. These theories generally consider the following categories: individual preferences, which deal with possible choices (preference objects), and collective choice functions, which define choices from individual preferences. But, in reality, the principles, rules and methods of collective choice are invoked and applied at different levels: the objects of choice are rarely complete descriptions of the state of the world including all possible details, they are often intermediate decisions that actually describe the modalities of future decisions. The standard theory thus crushes different levels. It allows itself this shortcut by referring to the consequentialist principle according to which an individual compares choice rules by simply comparing the choices induced by these rules: it is therefore unnecessary to introduce level 2 preferences (concerning the rules themselves), and there is no need to speak of choices about choice rules. However, the consequentialist principle applied to the question of collective choice is quite questionable. There is obviously a valorisation of choice procedures in themselves, and the attachment of many citizens to democratic principles, as well as their rejection of the very idea of dictatorship, is flagrant. It is therefore relevant to ask what happens to the theory of collective choice if we abandon this consequentialist shortcut. This is what is done in this thesis, by adopting the completely opposite point of view, which renounces imposing any connection whatsoever between level 2 preferences (or even higher level preferences) and initial level preferences. Choice methods are themselves choice objects. We must therefore deal with a preliminary problem of circularity of notions: in what sense can we say that a method of choice is or is not self-chosen? A function cannot belong to its arrival set, and we are led to define a generalized social choice correspondence (or constitution) as a sequence of choice correspondences of successive levels. With this difficulty solved, the thesis addresses another problem, not a logical one but one that is described as "positive". A method of choice may not choose itself: suppose, for example, that individual 1 prefers the dictatorship of individual 2 and that individual 2 prefers the dictatorship of individual 1. The two constitutions (dictatorship of 1 and dictatorship of 2) are in this case unstable. The major part of the thesis is devoted to variations on this theme of the stability of choice procedures, which also corresponds to the title of the thesis, and to the content of the first three chapters. ...

This thesis proposes to explore the following paradox: although they significantly improve the goodness of fit of some macroeconomic aggregates, Markov regime-switching models do not seem to provide significantly more accurate forecasts than linear models. In a first chapter, we examine the robustness of this result for different specifications. Using a decomposition approach, we evaluate the contribution of the different sources of forecast error. Based on the decomposition results, the second chapter proposes a new two-step forecasting approach. In the first step, the effort is devoted to producing reliable forecasts of future plans that exploit the information provided by leading indicators. In a second step, we inject these new regime forecasts into the analytical formulations of predictors established in the previous chapter. Results on simulated and empirical data demonstrate the relevance of the proposed approach. In a third chapter, we examine possible asymmetries in the dynamics of U.S. inflation. The forecasting of inflation over the last twenty years once again highlights the contribution of the new two-step procedure. The fourth chapter is devoted to the study of asymmetries in the conduct of US monetary policy. By showing the limits of a linear representation, a non-linear rule is proposed to detect different monetary policy regimes. The analysis is enriched by estimating forward-looking rules using different measures of inflation expectations.

After an initial assessment of the institutional choices made in the framework of EMU in the light of the literature, we raise, in the second chapter, the macroeconomic and political specificities linked to the framework of a monetary union (asymmetry of shocks, heterogeneity of transmission channels, divergence of political preferences) and their possible implications. The third chapter highlights the efficiency and equity trade-offs underlying the definition of the decision-making process for the common monetary policy. Chapter four reconsiders the issue of delegating monetary policy to an independent central bank as proposed by Rogoff in the context of a monetary union. Chapter five extends this analysis to the case where the central bank must respect an inflation target set by the member countries. Finally, chapter six examines, under the assumption of partisan central bankers, the impact of two institutional choices available to currency-union members: the process of appointing central bankers and the political system of the union.

The purpose of the thesis is to study the nature of the links between social stratification and inequality. First, we try to understand how, starting from a given level of inequality, society is structured into homogeneous groups. We thus study the link between the characteristics of income distribution and the organization of society into communities. More precisely, we highlight the relationship between the degree of heterogeneity of the distribution of endowments and the size and number of communities. Secondly, we ask ourselves how, in return, social stratification feeds the evolution of inequalities over time. In this perspective, beyond the dynamics of inequalities, we are also interested in the dynamics of societies. By examining the combined evolution of inequalities and the organization of society into communities, we identify the scenarios that lead to segregated and unequal societies in the long term and those that lead to integrated and equal societies. Furthermore, we highlight the negative effect of inequality on the rate of stationary growth. Finally, we address the macroeconomic question of the effects of inequality on voting choices for redistributive policies when individuals have prospects for social mobility. We show that this new dimension of the trade-off in the voting decision leads to a non-monotonic inequality-redistribution relationship. In order to address all these issues, we focus on the theoretical framework of endogenous coalition formation.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the international transmission of fiscal policies in a framework of interdependent countries. What are the mechanisms that link these economies and what impact do they have on economic policies? These are the questions to which this work tries to make a personal contribution. To do so, we have developed three parts in which we have tried to answer a particular problem in each of them. The first part highlights the different transmission channels of fiscal policies and extracts the "crossed" fiscal multipliers, the latter tracing the response of the foreign national product to a domestic fiscal policy. The second part considers a contemporary problem linked to tax evasion and capital flight: tax competition. It characterizes the consequences of capital mobility between countries on tax rates on capital income. In a world where capital is perfectly integrated, the taxation of capital income is no longer an economically viable policy. Faced with this dilemma, we wanted to propose two solutions: cooperation and the exchange of information between countries without them cooperating. The third part integrates the fact that agents show altruistic behavior towards their children. This behavior affects the determination of the return on capital and introduces a very binding link between two countries with a perfectly integrated capital market. In such a context, we study the impact of a tax on inheritances as well as a tax on capital income.

Monetary factors are considered to be inessential to the explanation of fluctuations by the real cycles current, which places its analysis in a Walrasian framework. Nevertheless, the imperfection of markets potentially gives nominal shocks a role in the short term. The aim here is to enrich the description of the mechanisms by which monetary impulses influence the real economy. The first part is devoted to an examination of the money-credit-product relationship in the cycle. Chapter 1 motivates the need to integrate the financial sphere in the study of monetary transmission. Chapter 2, through a multivariate analysis of the French economy, emphasizes the importance of the real effects of monetary shocks and reveals a mode of transmission through a liquidity effect that is compatible with a credit channel. The second part explicitly integrates the banking system into the model. Chapter 3 evaluates the ability of King and Plosser's model [1984] to account for the observed co-variations between money, credit and product, based on the single set of technology shocks. The simulation of the model, using French data, reveals that the path of integration of money chosen here does not appear to be relevant for basing its influence. To account for the observed liquidity effect, the idea adopted in chapter 4 is that some sectors (firms) are more closely linked to banks than others (households) because of frictions in the credit market. This asymmetry, through composition effects, partly supports a liquidity effect, but is not sufficient to ensure its robustness. The temporal structure of the exchanges appears to be crucial. The last part of the paper explores the model of chapter 4 in greater detail. Chapter 5 proposes an analysis of the cyclical dynamics of the term structure of interest rates and the mechanisms likely to explain its predictive power on inflation activity. In the model, the slope of the yield curve incorporates information on the future evolution of the economy, insofar as it incorporates agents' expectations. Chapter 6 presents a general equilibrium moderation of the strict credit channel. The behavior of banks, through their risk management, amplifies the effects of monetary shocks.