Essays on globalisation and conflicts, populism and firm heterogeneity

The first chapter of this thesis studies the macroeconomic effect of firm-level collateral requirements after a trade shock. A measure of firm-level collateral requirements is structurally retrieved from the model, then used to test the main implications empirically. In particular, we show that for a given level of collateral requirement, more financially capable firms do not transfer all the cost advantage they have in generating the required amount of collateral into lower prices, but rather retain relatively higher margins. Moreover, we also find that at the aggregate level the presence of financial frictions can affect the pass-through effects taking place in episodes of economic liberalization, with key consequences in terms of welfare. The second chapter analyses people’s support for populist platforms, the timing of the appearance of populist parties and their choice of political orientation between left and right. The factor that we highlight askey for the understanding of both demand and supply of populism is electoral participation. We show that the abstentionism, disillusionment effect, which the literature generally ignores, makes economic insecurity appear to be the real driver of populism on the demand side. And, these same abstention effects determine the timing, the quantity, and the orientation choice of populist parties on the supply side. The third chapter inquires into the impact of the activities of multinational enterprises on armed conflict. I deal with this question by merging geolocalized information on conflict events with novel data on multinationals' affiliates and headquarters for all African countries from 2007 to 2015. The multinationals' activity is seen to have significant, heterogeneous effects on the probability of conflict. Enterprises that increase local human capital (e.g. those operating in education and health) significantly decrease the probability of conflict, while affiliates operating in exploitative sectors (e.g. those that are intensive in scarce resources, such as agriculture and forestry) have the opposite effect. The increase in conflict due to multinationals' activities in exploitative sectors appears to be amplified in areas that feature the presence of politically unrepresented ethnic groups and/or groups targeted for large-scale land acquisition.(ECGE - Sciences économiques et de gestion) -- UCL, 201