Georgios Georgiadis Libri

In recent years, hot stamping has been established as a standard process for mass manufacturing of various crash-relevant body-in-white components, as a result of the rising demand for car body's weight reduction and crashworthiness increase. To further exploit the lightweight potential of this forming technology, investigations on the hot stamping of thin-walled boron-manganese steel components were conducted in this thesis. A sensitivity analysis of the entire process chain towards the sheets thickness was carried out. The flow behavior and the formability were analyzed under different thermal conditions and the effect of diverse influential parameters was evaluated. For this purpose, a novel experimental method was introduced, able to mimic industrial conditions. The research results and outcomes were validated by manufacturing and analyzing two thin hot stamped components, a demonstrator and a real-life automotive component. Finally, it was demonstrated that hot stamping of thin-walled boron-manganese steel components is feasible if the process chain is optimally designed and the process parameters properly adjusted.

I quantify the importance of financial structure, labor market rigidities and industry mix for cross-country asymmetries in monetary transmission. To do so, I determine how closely the impulse responses to a monetary policy shock obtained from country-specific vectorautoregressive (VAR) models and a non-standard panel VAR model match. In the country-specific VAR models, the impulse responses vary across countries in an unrestricted fashion. In the panel VAR model, the impulse responses also vary across countries, but only to the extent that countries differ regarding their financial structure, labor market rigidities and industry mix. For a sample of 20 industrialized countries over the time period from 1995 to 2009, I find that up to 70% (50%) of the cross-country asymmetries in the responses of output (prices) to a monetary policy shock can be accounted for by crosscountry differences in financial structure, labor market rigidities and industry mix. While in the short run asymmetries in the output responses arise mainly due to cross-country differences in industry mix, in the medium and long run differences in financial structure and labor market rigidities gain more importance. Moreover, cross-country differences in industry mix appear to be of rather minor importance for cross-country asymmetries in the transmission of monetary policy to prices.

The book presents a cross-country data-based econometric analysis exploring how macroeconomic policies are influenced by the prevailing institutional environment. Chapter one constructs indices of governance quality and domestic financial market development for 84 countries from 1970 to 2009, using a dynamic state-space model that incorporates various variables to capture specific governance and financial development aspects. Chapter two investigates the impact of macroeconomic policies on output and the Human Development Index, employing a conditional pooled mean-group panel data model while considering variations across different governance quality and gender inequality environments. In chapter three, the focus shifts to the role of governance quality and financial market development in the growth effects of financial globalization, again utilizing the conditional pooled mean-group panel data model. Finally, chapter four introduces a novel panel vector autoregressive model to analyze how cross-country asymmetries in the monetary transmission mechanism are influenced by differences in financial structure, labor market rigidities, and industry composition. This comprehensive analysis highlights the intricate relationships between institutional factors and macroeconomic outcomes across diverse national contexts.