International Economics Commons^™

Essays On International Trade And Economic Growth, Mateo Hoyos

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation I study the relationship between trade and economic growth, with a focus on developing economies. I specifically provide a critical review of the consensus view in trade and growth, according to which a liberal trade regime is generally the best policy stance to promote growth. In the first essay of this dissertation, I provide evidence that the relationship between trade policy and growth may depend on economic structure: tariff reductions are followed by higher levels of GDP per capita for manufacturer countries, but lower levels for nonmanufacturers. Testing for mechanisms, I find the heterogeneity seems to be …

Regulatory Protection And The Role Of International Cooperation, Yuan Mei

Research Collection School Of Economics

I develop a general equilibrium framework to analyze the welfare consequences of product regulations and their international harmonization. In my model, raising product standards reduces a negative consumption externality, but also increases the marginal and fixed costs of production. When product standards are set noncooperatively, the effects of standards on other countries' wages and number of firms are not internalized, giving rise to an international inefficiency. The World Trade Organization's nondiscrimination principle of national treatment only partly addresses this inefficiency. Welfare losses from abandoning national treatment average 2.8%, whereas the maximum welfare gains from efficient cooperation average 11.8%.

How Global Value Chains Affect Economic Output And Unemployment: An Empirical Evidence From Asean Countries, Sri Juli Asdiyanti Samuda

Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking

This paper examines the effects of Global Value Chains on economic output and unemployment in ten ASEAN countries from 1999 to 2018. This study provides estimation using the system GMM and panel causality test to determine the effect of GVC thoroughly. The results indicate a positive and significant effect of global value chains on economic output in ASEAN countries. However, the findings also show that global value chains increase unemployment during the observation period. Heterogenous panel non-causality findings suggest that economic output does not affect the level of participation of GVC, but unemployment affects the level of participation in ten …

The Effect Of Free Trade Agreements On Innovation: Evidence From Us Bilateral Free Trade Agreements With Australia, Chile, Singapore, And South Korea, Cameron Stevens

CMC Senior Theses

This paper combines two datasets to identify the effect of joining a bilateral Free Trade Agreement with the United States on innovation in four select countries: Australia, Chile, Singapore, and South Korea. Using an probability concordance developed by Lybbert and Zolas (2014), I map the number of patents recorded by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) into four digit North-American-Industry-Classification-System (NAICS) codes, which are then combined with industry level trade data from the US International Trade Committee (USITC). Using a difference-in-differences regression model, I estimate that joining an FTA increases the number of annual patent filings by 44 in a …

Sino-Us Trade War, Erin Torgersen

Senior Honors Projects

China and the United States are unquestionably the two wealthiest economies in the world. These two countries alone account for almost half of the world’s wealth. As these nations battle to become the world's most powerful economy, it is no surprise high tensions have developed to complicate their relationship. China’s economy has been rapidly growing, especially in the last two decades as China is making its way towards the top of the list of strongest economies through its abundance of exports and manufacturing. Alternatively, as the U.S.’s economy has slowly decreased in the last few years, the gap between the …

Biden’S Options: Policy Recommendations On The Us-China Trade War, Marley Taylor Belanger

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

As talks of unprecedented inflation and the long-term impact of the pandemic are on the rise in the United States, it is critical to understand how the foreign policy choices of the US Government ultimately impact its economy. This paper aims to evaluate the impact of the economic tensions between the US and China as a result of the ongoing US-China Trade War. To examine the viability of proposed options, a cost-benefit analysis of Biden’s policy options is implemented based on a framework of escalation, de-escalation, or modification of the current US-China economic policy initiative. The analysis of these proposals …

Trade Liberalization And The Social Determinants Of Health: A Case Study Of Nafta's Impact On Mexico From 1994 To 2005, Maria Trubetskaya

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Given the increased transnationalization of borders and economic interdependence between countries in the Global North and South, it is imperative to address how these trends impact the health and well being of the populations involved. The conventional neoliberal economic framework, however, falls short in explaining these dynamics due to its overemphasis of proximal determinants of health as direct consequences of commodification and free market activities. In congruence with those theoretical limitations, there is a limited assessment of more distal determinants – the social determinants of health (SDOH) – that are arguably more consequential for health and are interrelated with the …

Stuck In The Middle: An Analysis Of Economic Growth And The Technological Intensity Of Exports, Aya Abdel Halim

Theses and Dissertations

Driven by the persistence of some economies’ lower-middle-income status, also known as the middle-income trap, this research aims to identify the relationship between exports and their growth rates. A Cobb-Douglass model augmented by the different types of exports is employed, and the relationship is estimated for a panel of 77 lower-middle-income economies using multiple two-step system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) model. This research’s contribution to the literature is two-fold: First, it analyzes exports from both an aggregated level (i.e., total exports) as well as at a disaggregated level by the technological intensity of exports. To add, the panel of …

Between Lives And Economy: Optimal Covid-19 Containment Policy In Open Economies, Wen-Tai Hsu, Hsuan-Chih Luke Lin, Yang Han

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies optimal containment policy for combating a pandemic in an open-economy context. It does so via quantitative analyses using a model that incorporates a standard epidemiological compartmental model in a multi-country, multi-sector Ricardian model of international trade with full-fledged input-output linkages. We devise a novel approach in computing optimal national policies in the long run, and contrast these policies with a baseline in which countries maintain their current policies until vaccine availability. The welfare gains under optimal policies are asymmetric as the gains for the set of countries which should tighten up the containment measures are much larger …

Globalization And Top Income Shares, Lin Ma, Dimitrije Ruzic

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper documents empirically that access to global markets is associated with a higher executive-to-worker pay ratio within the firm. It then uses China's 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization as a trade shock to show that firms that exported to China prior to 2001 subsequently exported more, grew larger, and grew more unequal in terms of executive-to-worker pay. To evaluate analytically and quantitatively the impacts of globalization on top income inequality, this paper builds a model with heterogeneous firms, occupational choice, and executive compensation. In the model, executive compensation grows with the size of the firm, while the …

Effects Of Exposure To Chinese Imports On School Spending And Revenue From Property Tax, Yilei Bao

Honors Theses

I analyze the effect of exposure to Chinese import competition on school revenues per student from property tax, from local sources, and school expenditures per student in 676 Commuting Zones (CZ) from 1990 to 2007. I discover a negative relationship on the CZ level between exposure per worker to Chinese import competition and school expenditure per student, as well as school revenue per student from local sources. In contrast, impact on school revenue per student from property tax is not statistically significant. On average, in a given period, an increase of 1000 dollars in import exposure is related to a …

U.S.-China Bilateral Trade Flows And U.S. Employment, Tobin Hansen

CMC Senior Theses

The U.S.-China diplomatic relationship today is shaped significantly by economic factors. Recent strains of literature have expanded our understanding of how international economic policy choices have effected U.S. workers and labor markets. This paper extends this research by imposing bilateral symmetry in the trade flow calculations of previous works, which historically have considered U.S. exports globally. I build on the net-impact analysis of Feenstra, Ma, and Xu (2017b) and adopt the instrumental variable strategy used in Acemoglu et al. (2016), which uses Chinese trade flows with eight additional high-income countries to avoid endogeneity when comparing U.S.-China trade. From this analysis, …

The Impact Of 2018 Tariffs On U.S. Trade Values Across Relevant Categories, Lydia Murray

Undergraduate Economic Review

The Office of the United States Trade Representative, under the direction of President Donald Trump, has implemented protectionist tariffs to an extent not seen in the past several decades. This paper explores data from the U.S. Census Bureau to analyze how the values of U.S. imports and exports have differed from what would have been expected for 2018 in the absence of tariffs. This is done by using past years’ data to create a predictive curve for 2018 trade values across several different product categories, which have been subject to tariffs. The general finding of this paper is that the …

Did Dr-Cafta Affect The Exports Of The Dominican Republic To The United States?, Maria Ivanova Reyes Peguero, Asger V. Hansen

Economics Faculty Publications

This article evaluates the impact the Dominican Republic and Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) had on the exports of the Dominican Republic (DR) to the United States. We estimate a gravity model for the DR exports to the 109 trade partners of the country from 1990 to 2014. This model quantifies the effect of the DR-CAFTA since 2007, when the agreement was ratified, and finds that the DR-CAFTA negatively affected DR exports to the US. We conduct further analysis of factors that could explain the decline in exports, in spite of the ratification of the agreement. We find that …

The Role Of The State In International Trade Theory And Policy: Historical Evidence From South Korea And Brazil, Sumaiya Nehla Saif

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the early 1980s, the economic performance of individual countries has been increasingly dependent on global dynamics. Neoliberal policies, including free trade, have been fostered by the global community for both mature and developing economies, led by the view that free markets constitute the driving force of economic growth and development. Accordingly, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) - in addition to the developments within mainstream economic theory - have contributed to portray the state as the carrier of inefficiencies and market distortions, which prevent the unfolding of economic freedom and …

Trade Rout: As Trade Tensions Built Between U.S. And Canada, This American Border Town Felt The Freeze, Matt Cutler, Isaac Carey

Capstones

A close business relationship with Canada has allowed Plattsburgh to thrive as a manufacturing town. Over 100 Quebec-based companies operate there, and 15 percent of the workforce in the county gets its paycheck from a Canadian company. Even more impressive, this comes at a time when manufacturing jobs are declining nationwide. While factories are shutting down across the rust belt, in Plattsburgh they are opening up.

There is just one problem.

All of this was made possible by the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. And just this April, the Trump administration abruptly threatened to pull out of the …

Essays On Trade And Growth, Yulin Hou

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three essays on international trade and economic growth. The first essay investigates whether the content of what economies export matters for human capital accumulation. I construct a small open economy model and find that expansion of primary exports can harm human capital accumulation if the economy is initially allocating significant resources to primary goods production. Then I test this prediction empirically using Latin American data over the period from 1965 to 2010 and find robust evidence in support of the hypothesis that a shift towards primary exports reduces human capital accumulation.

In the second essay, …

Three Essays On Population Dynamics, Trade And Growth, Anna Maximova

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

Changes in immigration patterns and differential fertility choices shape the economies of both developed and developing countries. However, these changes affect the economies of developed and developing nations in different ways. This study aims to understand the changes in population dynamics, brought about by differences in cross--country differential fertility choices and migration patterns, and how these changes affect economic development via the channels of international trade and cross--country human capital accumulation.

Chapter 1 discusses the background, data and literature on the patterns and composition of immigration and international trade, which are further explored in Chapter 2 for the world sample …

Us Net Foreign Direct Investment: Determinants And Implications, Ryan Gomez

Honors Theses

Political campaigns always churn the political spectrum on the issue of outsourcing and international trade with the 2017 presidential primary being no exception. Are politicians, like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, correct when preaching the economic negatives associated with outsourcing? Are they considering the right factors? Could it be that a strictly negative outlook on outsourcing is economically inappropriate in determining future policy? In an attempt to answer these questions, this paper will critically analyze the impact of incoming and outgoing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the USA. Specifically, this study will use determinants of Net FDI (NFDI), where NFDI …

Contents

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Dynamics And Trends Of The Content Of Chinese Exports From 1995-2011, Megan Kerbs

Honors Theses

There is no question that China’s role in the international economy has grown over time, as it seems to be claiming more and more of center stage in the global arena. Back in the early 1990’s, the phenomenon of globalization enabled China to expand its reach, inserting itself into intricate production hierarchies that began to define the global marketplace. China experienced a massive export boom in 2000, and since, has evolved to become a highly sophisticated, high-tech country that now plays an integral role within not only the East Asian region, but also the rest of the world. This thesis …

Growth Engine: Effects Of China’S Trade And Investment On The Economies Of East And Southeast Asia, Xi Gao

Honors Theses

The emergence of China as an economic superpower through globalization and fragmentation of production has impacted global trade relations, particularly in East and Southeast Asia (ESA). China has become a major trading partner for ESA economies not only through exporting goods to ESA countries, but also importing goods to satisfy China’s energy and consumer needs. This thesis studies the impact trade and investment relationships with China have on ESA economies. This study will include ten developed and developing ESA countries: Japan, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lao DPR, and Philippines. The results obtained include: 1) the …

Evaluating Stolper-Samuelson: Trade Liberalization & Wage Inequality In India, Anthony M. Michael

Master's Theses

This paper tests the predictions of the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem in India after it underwent major trade reform in 1991. Using industry level tariff data, the paper empirically examines trade liberalization’s effect on the wages of high-skilled labor relative to low skilled labor within firms. The study finds empirical evidence to support growing wage differentials within firms, which contradict the predictions of the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem. Additionally, when controlling for firm size and the effects of the global financial crisis, these results remain robust. Finally, the paper explores training and welfare and R&D’s effect on the wage differentials within firms, finding a …

Financial Openness And Trade Volatility In Argentina, Joseph H. Asciuto

Master's Theses

This paper will identify the relationship between financial openness and trade volatility in Argentina. Data spanning 1970-2011 provided by the IMF, WTO, and INDEC will be used to construct a panel dataset for both a global analysis and a sectoral analysis for the Argentine economy. The application of established and accepted techniques to the constructed dataset will show a negative correlation between trade volatility and financial openness; thus, financial openness acts as a stabilizing mechanism for trade. Additional analysis will be performed on the of role regional trade agreements as stabilization mechanisms for trade. A significant implication of this study …

The Shochu Conundrum: Economics And Gatt Article Iii, Alex Davis

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper will discuss the National Treatment (NT) obligation contained in Article III of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994 as applied in precedential tax discrimination cases. Case law has not taken a firm stance on the economic versus legal interpretation of the likeness/directly competitive or substitutable (DCS) criterion or the principle of “so as to afford protection” (SATAP) captured in Article III.2. After examining the case law on discriminatory taxation, I conclude that the NT obligation in trade agreements is imperfect. Nonetheless, NT is a critical component of these agreements, and the international trade order would …

Energy Price Shocks And External Balances, Bao Tan Huynh

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the impact of a wide set of energy price shocks on exter- nal balances using a two-country framework comprising multiple sectors and en- dogenous energy production with convex costs. The paper disentangles different demand and supply shocks in the energy market through their distinct impact on external balances. It provides a theoretical confirmation of Kilian et al. (2009) and a theoretical foundation to the determining role of the non-energy trade balance in the transmission of energy price shocks. The presence of durables also highlights the immediate channel through which energy prices impact the non-energy trade balance.

Coup D'État And International Trade, Brian Alan Childers

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Trade, Competitiveness And Employment In The Global Economy, Susan Houseman

Susan N. Houseman

No abstract provided.

Unemployment And Economic Integration For Developing Countries, Haiwen Zhou

Economics Faculty Publications

While financial or trade integration between countries may increase the size of the market and aid the adoption of more advanced technologies, will it also increase the level of urban unemployment for a developing country? In this model, there is unemployment in the urban sector. Manufacturing firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose increasing returns technologies to maximize profits. Financial firms provide capital to manufacturing firms and they also engage in oligopolistic competition. We show that an increase in the wage rate in the manufacturing sector changes neither the level of technology nor the level of employment in the manufacturing …

Eu-China Economic Relations: Interactions And Barriers, Zheng Lu

Zheng Lu (Chinese: 路征)

EU-China economic interactions became more and more frequent in the past decades, nowadays EU and China are main trade partner for each other. This paper analyzed EU-China economic interactions from three dimensions: bilateral governmental interactions, trade and investment flows as well as barriers to trade and investment. Findings show that EU-China close relationship is particularly based on goods trade especially on intra-industrial trade of manufacturing industrial products, and trade imbalance is arising from trade in Machinery and Transport Equipment and Other Manufactured Goods (e.g., Clothing and clothing accessories); This paper also found that there exist a myriad of trade and …