Essays on demographics, structural change and the macroeconomy

Sammanfattning: This doctoral thesis in Economics consists of three chapters examining the macroeconomic impact of demographic and structural changes.The first chapter (“Demographics and the real exchange rate”) analyzes how the change in the demand composition due to population aging leads a country aging more than its trading partners to have a significant real exchange rate appreciation. It is shown that the quantitative estimates depend crucially on the general equilibrium effect of demographic change on the real interest rate. This effect is specifically analyzed in the second chapter (“Demographics and the natural real interest rate”). Calibrating an overlapping generation model for the euro area it is shown that aging exerts a permanent downward pressure on the real interest rate, while only a limited set of structural and policy factors could mitigate this decline. The third chapter (“Structural skill-biased technical change’’) considers another force underlying the process of economic growth of advanced economies. It documents that in the process of systematic reallocation of economic activity from the goods sector to the services sector (``structural change’’), the relative hourly wage of the services sector decreases constantly over time. An explanation is provided: “skill-biased technical change” leads the relative skill-intensity in the goods sector to increase over time.