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| (2007) PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science. In this thesis, I theoretically investigate three related aspects of international trade and economic development. First, I present a model of social learning about the suitability of local conditions for new business ventures and explore its implications for the microeconomic patterns of economic development. I show that: i) firms tend to 'rush' into business ventures with which other firms have had surprising success thus causing development to be 'lumpy'; ii) sufficient business confidence is crucial for fostering economic growth; iii) development may involve wavelike patterns of growth where successive business ventures are first pursued and then given up; iv) there is, nevertheless, no guarantee that firms pursue the best venture even in the long-run. Second, I offer a new explanation for the empirical finding that trade liberalization increases firm productivity. In particular, I develop a simple general equilibrium model of trade in which trade liberalization leads to outsourcing as firms focus on their core competencies in response to tougher competition. Since firms are better at performing tasks the closer they are to their core competencies, this outsourcing increases firm productivity. Third, I propose a novel theory of GATT/WTO negotiations which solves two important problems of the standard terms-of-trade theory. First, it is consistent with the fact that GATT/WTO regulations do not constrain export taxes. Second, it does not rely on the terms-of-trade argument but instead emphasizes market access considerations. To achieve this, I consider trade policy in a 'new trade' environment. I first argue that tariffs are inefficiently high in the non-cooperative equilibrium because countries attempt to improve their relative market access at the expense of other countries. I then show how GATT/WTO negotiations can help countries overcome this inefficiency by providing new rationales for the GATT/WTO principles of reciprocity and nondiscrimination.
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 Downloads per month over past year View more statistics 2017 Theses Doctoral Essays on International Trade, Welfare and InequalityHow important are the distributional effects of international trade? This has been one of the most central questions pursued by international economists, particularly because much of the public opposition towards increased openness is due to the belief that welfare changes are unevenly distributed. In this dissertation, I rely on counterfactual analysis and natural experiments to study topics of international trade, welfare and inequality in the context of both developing and developed economies. In particular, I combine theoretical modeling and empirical analysis to examine the effects of international trade on (1) real wages of individuals within and across countries; (2) within-sector wage dispersion caused by heterogeneous responses of firms with different productivity levels to cheaper imported inputs. In each of the three chapters, I contribute to the existing literature by relaxing simplifying assumptions that have proved to be inconsistent with data and exploring new mechanisms that link international trade to inequality. Chapter 1, “Trade and Real Wages with Demand and Productivity Heterogeneity,” presents a general equilibrium model that incorporates the effects of trade liberalization on both an individual’s nominal wage and consumer price index. A vast majority of the literature focuses on the income channel, which is its effect on the distribution of nominal wages across workers. A small number of studies consider the expenditure channel, which is its differential impact on consumer price indices. It is well known that the consumption baskets of high-income and low-income consumers look very different. To our knowledge, there are only three case studies that have looked at these two channels jointly for individual countries, Argentina, Mexico and India. We provide a unified framework incorporating both channels by allowing for non-homothetic preferences and worker heterogeneity across jobs. In spite of its many dimensions of heterogeneity at the individual level, the model remains tractable enough that allows us to estimate its key parameters and perform counterfactuals. Chapter 2, “Trade and Real Wage Inequality: Cross-Country Evidence,” addresses the following question: what is the impact of trade liberalization on the distribution of real wages in a large cross-section of countries? Trade liberalization affects real-wage inequality through two channels: the distribution of nominal wages across workers and, if the rich and the poor consume different bundles of goods, the distribution of price indices across consumers. Prior work has focused mostly on one or the other of these channels, but no paper has studied both jointly for a large set of countries. Based on the theoretical framework in Chapter 1, I measure the distributional effects of trade liberalization incorporating both channels for a sample of 40 countries. More specifically, I parametrize the model using sector-level trade and production data. Because skill-intensive goods are also high-income elastic in the data, I find an intuitive, previously unexplored, and strong interaction between the two channels. According to my counterfactual analysis, trade cost reductions generate dramatically different results for both nominal wage inequality and price index inequality than what previous research has obtained by focusing on either channel alone. I find that trade cost reductions decrease the relative nominal wage of the poor and the relative price index for the poor in all countries. On net, real-wage inequality falls everywhere. Chapter 3, “Imported Inputs and Within-Sector Wage Dispersion,” proposes a new mechanism through which trade liberalization affects income inequality within a country: the use of imported inputs. Intuitively, a firm with higher initial productivity is better at using higher quality foreign inputs. This justifies paying the fixed costs for a larger set of imported inputs when input tariff liberalization decreases their relative price. The firm becomes more import intensive, which enhances its productivity advantage. As a result, the firm hires higher quality workers, produces higher quality products and pays higher wages to its workers, increasing within-sector wage dispersion. We find that both the mean and the dispersion of the distribution of firm productivity, markup and size went up during a period when China reduced its tariffs on imported inputs. More importantly, these results still hold when we consider the subset of firms that survived throughout the sample period, from 1998 to 2007. In addition, we develop a partial-equilibrium, heterogeneous-firm model with endogenous imported inputs and labor quality choice that is consistent with these observations. Finally, we provide empirical evidence that supports the model’s prediction that the differential change in the import intensity of firms with different productivity levels explains these patterns.
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The main goal of this Dissertation is to provide an extensive study of international trade and also ascertain the impact that it exerts on the global economy by narrowing down to regional ...
literature). In this dissertation, I contribute to the literature by analyzing two under-studied trade barriers: natural disasters and rules of origin. The imposition of the former is primarily out of policy-makers' control, while policy-makers directly 1\International Trade Statistics, 2015." World Trade Organization.
Master Thesis International Economics Supervisor: Lorenzo Pozzi Second assessor: Julian Emami Namini Rico Huijskens 388659 Date: 26-07-2017 Abstract This paper examines how free trade agreements (FTAs) affect bilateral trade flows and if this effect differs between developed and developing countries. To conduct the empirical analysis,
growth and increasing international trade. For instance, at the end of 90 years the Colombian case shows a deep economic recession, while during 2000 years, historical unemployment levels were observed, between 12% and 18%. However, since typical international trade theories, as the Hecksher-Ohlin setup, are built on the assumption of
The thesis consists of three essays on international trade, macroeconomics and finance. In the first essay (joint with Marc de la Barrera and Masao Fukui), we study how the interaction between China's productivity growth and currency peg to the US dollar affected the labor market and trade imbalance in the United States. Empirically, we
Title: Optimal regulation and the law of international trade : a law & economics analysis of the WTO law on domestic regulation Author (s): RIGOD, Boris Date: 2014 Citation: Florence : European University Institute, 2014 Type: Thesis Series/Number: EUI; LAW; PhD Thesis Abstract: Background: Conflicts between domestic regulatory preferences and ...
The Thesis investigates the determinants and patterns of specialisation and international trade in the manufacturing sectors of countries that are similar in terms of their technology, relative factor endowments and preferences. Chapter 1 shows that differences in country size alone can be a basis for inter ...
In this thesis, I theoretically investigate three related aspects of international trade and economic development. First, I present a model of social learning about the suitability of local conditions for new business ventures and explore its implications for the microeconomic patterns of economic development. I show that: i) firms tend to 'rush' into business ventures with which other firms ...
This thesis is a collection of three essays in international trade. Chapter 1 explains how firm heterogeneity and market structure can distort the geography of international trade. By considering only the intensive margin of trade, Krugman (1980) predicts
Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'International trade.'. Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago ...
Three Essays in International Trade Leonid Karasik Doctor of Philosophy Department of Economics University of Toronto 2014 Abstract This thesis presents three papers on international trade. The rst chapter examines how trade liberalization a ects rms when labor market institutions di er across countries. One would
International trade (globalization more generally) still matters because it affects the composition of those domestic firms. A different type of spillover has to do with changing prices as a consequence of globalization: it can improve the availability or quality of inputs available to firms, and hence their innovation incentives; or it can ...
sitive relationship between economic growth and total trade. Below is the. econometric equation for the simple linear regression model:logGDP = 3.445 + 0.004(Trade) The simple linear regression shows that as the amount of trade as a percent of GDP increas. s by 1%, a country's GDP per capita will increase by 0.4%. While the coefficient.
This dissertation, written by Syed Al-Helal Uddin, and entitled Three Essays on International Trade and Finance, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment. We have read this dissertation and recommend that it be approved. Prasad Bidarkota. Mihaela Pintea.
2017 Theses Doctoral. Essays on International Trade, Welfare and Inequality. He, Zheli. How important are the distributional effects of international trade? This has been one of the most central questions pursued by international economists, particularly because much of the public opposition towards increased openness is due to the belief that welfare changes are unevenly distributed.
Essays on International Trade, Growth and Finance by Marc-Andreas Muendler GRAD (University of Munich, Germany) 1998 M.A. (Boston University) 1997 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics in the GRADUATE DIVISION of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Committee ...
Since the late 1990s, the research focus in international trade has shifted to the rm-level emphasizing the heterogeneity of rms and their core role in shaping international trade ows. Nowadays, it is a well-established fact that not all rms in a country export and that those rms that do export are more productive than purely domestic rms. This
2019. The study applies economic theory international trade together with empirical analysis to assess the impact of international commodity trade on GDP. As opposed to forecasting, a now-casting approach is applied to the multiple linear regression model to assess the impact of international trade on economic growth in real-time. Using a
This thesis traces the development of the 'fair and equitable treatment' concept in international trade law, first, following its appearance after World War I as a principle for inter-State trade relations, and then, after World War II, its fertilization into international investment law and policy.
Abstract. PhD thesis, May 17 2013. The research focuses on the influence of international trade on the Early Modern development of the Austrian Netherlands. It centres on key commodities such as ...
International Trade and Foreign Policy Julian Hinz Th`ese pour l'obtention du grade de Docteur de l'Universit´e Paris 1 Panth ´eon-Sorbonne ... this thesis; From Keith Head, with whom I discussed my research at length and that left me even more interested in gravity equations; From Lionel
Abstract: The European Commission unveiled in February 2021 its updated policy regarding international trade. One of the key pillars of this strategy is the inclusion of gender equality within the EU trade policies. This inclusion is in line with the Gender Equality Strategy for 2020-2025.
This dissertation consists of three chapters.The first chapter studies the heterogeneous impact of the US-China trade war in the presence of global value chains. By building a two-stage, multi-country, multi-sector general equilibrium model, this chapter discusses how tariffs on imports affect domestic producers through linkages within and across industries.