Essays on international finance and economics

The first essay explains why credit contracts in developing countries are often denominated in foreign currencies, even after many of these economies succeeded in controlling inflation. I propose a new interpretation based on the demand for insurance against real aggregate shocks. The fact that devaluations occur more frequently in adverse states of the world provides a motive for holding dollar assets when the risk of recession is the main source of volatility in consumption. The model predicts persistence in the degree of "dollarization" in economies with low inflationary risk. The second essay looks at how the government's lack of commitment technology affects the capacity of resident agents to optimally diversify risk. I find that government's moral hazard introduces a trade-off between pooling idiosyncratic risk and diversifying aggregate country uncertainty. As a result, local agents face excessive consumption risk. This paper also explores how institutions can be designed as to overcome this moral hazard problem. The third essay proposes an explanation for the variation across countries in the quality of the institutions governing the financial. The explanation based on the proportion of local investors participating in the domestic financial sector.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Rappoport, Veronica E. (Veronica Eva)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Daron Acemoglu, Olivier Blanchard and Ricardo Caballero.

• Economics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33829

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33829