Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Political Economy Of Preferential Trade Agreements, Ross Castner Jestrab

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is comprised of three chapters on preferential trade agreements (PTAs). The first two chapters examine why countries sign PTAs with other countries, while the final chapter studies the effect of PTAs on imports.

The first chapter provides direct empirical evidence that PTAs are consistent with the terms-of-trade theory. In other words, PTAs internalize the temptation to increase tariffs when countries possess importer market power. Using PTAs that occur between 2001-2015, I study the formation of PTAs and the structure of first year PTA tariff cuts. I first show the likelihood of a PTA increases when both countries have …

The Political Economy Of Preferential Trade Agreements, Ross Castner Jestrab

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is comprised of three chapters on preferential trade agreements (PTAs). The first two chapters examine why countries sign PTAs with other countries, while the final chapter studies the effect of PTAs on imports.

The first chapter provides direct empirical evidence that PTAs are consistent with the terms-of-trade theory. In other words, PTAs internalize the temptation to increase tariffs when countries possess importer market power. Using PTAs that occur between 2001-2015, I study the formation of PTAs and the structure of first year PTA tariff cuts. I first show the likelihood of a PTA increases when both countries have …

Essays On Globalization, Labor Market, And Productivity, Hoang Pham

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation studies issues at the intersection of globalization, labor market, and productivity in developing countries. It is composed of three chapters.

Chapter 1 studies how a country's trade policy affects competition in its domestic labor market. In a heterogeneous-firm model with oligopsonistic local labor markets, this chapter demonstrates that opening up to trade can affect distortions in such markets. These distortions arise because firms are large and able to exercise market power over their local workers. Using a panel dataset of Chinese manufacturing firms from 1998-2007, I measure firm-level labor market distortion, captured by the ratio between marginal revenue …

Effects Of Trade And Fdi Policies: Evidence From The U.S. And China, Yang Liang

Dissertations - ALL

This thesis is a collection of three empirical essays in international trade and labor economics. The first and second essays develop empirical methodologies to investigate the distributional effect of globalization on labor market outcomes in the United States and China, respectively. The first essay studies the effect of export expansion on U.S. labor market outcomes over the last two decades at the industry level. The second essay connects new economic geography (NEG) model with detailed individual-level data to test theoretical mechanisms linking wages and geographic access to markets in China. The third essay investigates the role of Chinese industrial policy …