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Globalization and technological advancement have made the world a dynamic global village where information travels across continents with the speed of light. In the modern age, while uninterrupted and efficient communication has various advantages, there also exist various evils. One such menace is the ‘Fake News’. The phenomenon has spread around the world like wildfire and has increasingly become a challenge for the general public to differentiate, on their own, between honest and fake information. The impact, especially in the economic dimension, it has on the dynamics of nations and outside of its boundaries cannot be ignored any further. Hence, this study seeks to investigate the current fake news detection practices and aims to provide necessary improvement proposals in this domain of research.
The research provides an in-depth investigation of the problem of the spread of fake content and provides valuable basic information on its influence around the world. As a solution, comprehensive research is conducted on the blockchain technology and its industrial applications, among various alternative concepts, for fake news detection. Taking inspiration from various already developed solutions and on-going research, a blockchain framework is proposed as a concrete solution to counter the persistent risk of fake news and disinformation which upholds the core values of transparency, trustworthiness, traceability and authenticity.
The results indicate that none of the developed or on-going research provides an effective blueprint of the solution and there is a need for an integrated framework which has a user-centric approach. The thesis concludes by discussing how to improve the current fake news detection techniques by proposing an integrated fake news detection framework model following a blockchain-inspired approach. The research can also help in terms of extensive research for the future in this area of study.

Fake News --- Blockchain --- Economics --- Information security --- Journalism --- Fake news detection --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Stratégie & innovation

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Sciences économiques & de gestion > Finance

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The spread between value and growth (also called the value premium) is one of the best accepted iterations of a market anomaly, however the reasons for the over performance of value portfolios over growth portfolios is still a source of debate. The nature of the risk that value stocks bear is often related to the fact that these companies have high ratios of fixed assets and thus, are less flexible than growth stocks in making adjustments during recessions.

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the existing corpus of literature by identifying which macroeconomic factors have an impact on the value premium. This thesis tries to answer two main questions. First, can the value premium be explained by the business cycle risk? Second, do macroeconomic variables have an impact on the volatility of value, growth, and HML returns? Several econometrics models on the financial time series have been applied to answer these questions.

First, we analyzed the impact over business cycles of a set of macroeconomic variables on the value premium using a Markov Switching model. This model suggests several conclusions. First, that asymmetries can be observed over the business cycles for the value, growth and HML portfolios, meaning that they react differently to changes in economic conditions over to the business cycles. Then, during the economic downturn, value excess returns are more strongly affected compared to growth excess returns by certain macroeconomic factors, specifically the growth rate of gross private domestic investments, the growth rate of gross government investments, the term spread changes, the credit spread changes, the inflation rate, the growth rate of industrial production and the growth rate of the aggregated profits. These provide evidence that the value premium can be further explained by economic fundamentals rather than the behavior of investors. Our results prove that value stocks have to bear the macroeconomic risk and this is consistent with the flexibility hypothesis.

Then, this study identifies a set of macroeconomic factors which influence the prediction of the value and growth excess returns using the elastic net algorithm. These results confirm that macroeconomic factors are drivers of the value premium in both economic downturns as well as upturns.

Finally, using a subset of the data available in a monthly frequency, we have tested the impact of a set of macroeconomic variables on the volatility of value, growth and HML returns through the GARCH-G(1,1) and GARCH-S(1,1) models. The findings have led us to conclude that macroeconomic variables have a significant impact on the value and growth excess returns and therefore, also influence the volatility of the value premium.

Value investing --- Business cycle --- Value premium --- Markov Switching model --- Elastic-net --- GARCH --- GARCH-S --- GARCH-G --- Macroeconomic variables --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Finance

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Nowadays, most people use banking services in order to make a payment or to send money abroad. We say that the banks play the role of financial intermediary. Although, these banking services are costly and take time to be carried out. Due to this and the financial crisis, people are more and more doubtful to use the financial institutions. 
Consequently, an unknown person using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto invents the first crypto-money called bitcoin in 2008. This no-regulated virtual money is created by the new technology called "Blockchain". This technology is going to change the world. Someone won't pass through an intermediary anymore to make exchange with someone else because he will be able to make it through the Blockchain.
In my thesis, I'm focusing on the impacts of this new technology on the financial intermediation. I would like to answer these following questions throughout this work: which are the effects of the Blockchain on the financial intermediation: opportunity or threat? Does the role of the financial intermediaries will change in the future? Do the banks can transform the threat in an opportunity thanks to a bank’s interest in the Blockchain?
To find the answers, I write firstly about the current financial system to get a good understanding of the different roles that can run a financial institution and also the advantages and disadvantages of this financial institution. Then, I do a focus on the Blockchain with its real applications, its pros and cons, and its costs. Finally, I explain why the banks are forced to develop their intermediation with the Blockchain.
Thanks to this thesis, we can conclude that the Blockchain is a great opportunity for the banking sector to develop their financial intermediation. Indeed, this technology has several advantages: trust without trusted third party, efficiency, costs cutting, better velocity and higher security in the transactions. Right now, the banks have to innovate their intermediation though the Blockchain. Otherwise, their roles of intermediaries could be deleted.

Sciences économiques & de gestion > Finance

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The profitability effect is a recently documented effect that has been proven to be existent on the U.S market by Novy-Marx (2010) using the Fama & French three factor model. Using the European stocks consisting the STOXX Europe 600 index, for a period of 10 years, this study attempts to uncover the existence of the profitability effect on the European market, using the Fama & French five factor models.

Market anomalies --- Factor models --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Finance