Main objective of this thesis is to analyze the effect of exchange rate volatility and different exchange rate regimes on international trade. Through use of a panel data including US trade with large number of countries and fixed effects estimation methods significant negative effect of exchange rate volatility on trade is found, but this effect is not unambiguous. I find larger effect of exchange rate regimes on US imports compared to exports. CEU eTD Collection ii Acknowledgments I am very thankful to my academic supervisor, Professor Miklós Koren, for his valuable comments and recommendations which helped me in developing my approach to the topic. I want to thank Yulia for her patience, support, help and love throughout the thesis process. Special thanks to Mammad Babayev for entertaining me during the sleepless nights and providing insights that guided and challenged my thinking.

The paper constructs a theoretical framework in which the value of information in general equilibrium is determined by the interaction of two opposing mechanisms: first, more information about future random events leads to better individual decisions and, therefore, higher welfare. This is the ‘Blackwell effect’ where information has positive value. Second, more information in advance of trading limits the risk sharing opportunities in the economy and, therefore, reduces welfare. This is the ‘Hirshleifer effect’ where information has negative value. We demonstrate that in an economy with production information has positive value if the information refers to non-tradable risks; hence, such information does not destroy the Blackwell theorem. Information which refers to tradable risks may invalidate the Blackwell theorem if the consumers are highly risk averse. The critical level of relative risk aversion beyond which the value of information becomes negative is less than 0.5. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003Keywords and Phrases: Value of information, General equilibrium, Risk sharing markets., JEL Classification Numbers: D8, D51, D52.,

Summary. This paper uses an overlapping generations framework to analyze the implications of different financing regimes in the education sector for human capital formation and economic welfare. Agents privately invest in education after they have received a noisy information signal about their abilities. The incentives of the individuals to invest in education are determined by the financing regime under which the economy operates. The paper analyzes and compares three financing regimes. Under each regime, the payback obligation of an educational loan is contingent, to some extent, on an individual's future income.

No abstract

No abstract