International Economics Commons^™

The Evolutionary Global Vision Of Chinese Political Philosophy; China's Socio-Economic Transformation In The 21st Century, Meryem Gurel

Master's Projects and Capstones

Evolving relations of East Asia due to trade liberalization raised the search for financial stability for institutional development. It also increased the importance of China integrating the global economy into renewing its political philosophy in the new century. This capstone project aims to examine why China has transformed its socio-economic structure by generating outward investments and how it has affected international political relations in terms of the role of the economic institution Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Quantitative methodology aims to examine the impact of China’s export trade on income distribution and economic growth through linear regression analysis for the …

Three Essays On International Financial And Monetary Interactions, Kemal Burak Bekircan

Dissertations

This dissertation develops three essays on safe haven currency behavior and international monetary interactions.

Essay one notes the dramatic appreciation of the U.S. dollar vis-à-vis all world currencies, along with its reversal after a year on the account of the Great Recession. This paper investigates bilateral U.S. dollar exchange rate movements during and in the aftermath of the Great Recession. I find that increasing global market uncertainty has a significant and consistent effect in strengthening of the U.S. dollar. This striking finding suggests flight-to-safety phenomenon of foreign investors, and repatriation of capital flows to the United States by the U.S. …

Essays On Financial Frictions, Shipping Frequency And Exchange Rate Pass-Through, Md Deluair Hossen

Doctoral Dissertations

In three chapters of this dissertation, I examine financing frictions, shipping frequency, and exchange rate pass-through.

In the first chapter, I develop a model of importer-exporter procurement where the importer is procuring international inputs from the exporting firms located in developing countries. The exporters are credit constrained for working capital, incur the per-shipment fixed costs, and get paid after goods delivered to the importer. The model shows that for high financing costs in origin and destination, the shipping frequency increases. Furthermore, longer delivery times increase shipping frequency as well as procurement costs. The model also shows that the higher per-shipment …

Well-Being Indicators, Social Globalization, And Unaccompanied Child Migration From Central America, Lucia Farriss

Dissertations

This research investigates the effect of well-being indictors and social globalization on the migration of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) from Central America. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the surge in UAC that began in 2014 at the United States southern border is driven primarily by violence, or whether other factors are at play. Using data for the period 2008-2018, the apprehension of UAC serves as a proxy for measuring unaccompanied child migration to the United States. The four countries of focus are El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico as they contribute the largest numbers of child …

How Effective Are African Health Systems? An Analysis Of Guinea, Liberia And Sierra Leone, Kale A. Adote

HON499 projects

While developed countries in the rest of the world have found themselves overwhelmed by the Covid-19 pandemic, in comparison, Africa has been minimally affected given that it has reported lower case counts since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. However, given the destructive potential of this pandemic, this raises the question: how prepared are health systems in Africa to face major outbreaks? To answer this question, this article explored the state of health systems and epidemic preparedness in African countries using Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone as case studies. Given that these three countries were epicentre countries during …

On The Basis Of Sex: Personal Status Law Reforms And Economic Growth, Kylie Bring

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how law reform toward gender equity has an impact on economic growth in Arab countries in the Middle East. Personal status law reform granting women economic, social, and personal freedoms is spreading across the region and showing substantial change. Using case studies of major PSL reforms in Tunisia and Morocco, this thesis outlines qualitative and quantitative evidence to support the case that gender equity benefits the economic growth of the given country.

Empirical Studies On Exchange Rate Pass-Through, Access To Foreign Currency And Firm Performance, Muhammed Siraj Muhammed

Lingnan Theses and Dissertations (MPhil & PhD)

This dissertation consists of two parts and each part contains two empirical studies that rely on macroeconomics, monetary policy, and international trade. The first part addresses the issue of exchange rate pass-through to domestic price developments with a focus on the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, while the second part explores constraints of manufacturing firms in Ethiopia and examines the impact of access to foreign currency on firm performance. In the first chapter, I presented an overview of the study. In the second chapter, I examined to which extent the exchange rate fluctuations transmitted into domestic inflation (ERPT) using a large …

Essays On Trade Liberalization, Structural Change, And Technical Efficiency, Li Zhao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A recent and growing literature analyzes differential growth across regions of Asia, Latin America, and Sub Saharan Africa. The structural change of labor reallocation is an important determinant of growth in developing countries having large productivity gaps across sectors within the border. Therefore, sectoral characteristics are still an important determinant of cross-region studies. In addition, it is well-known that labor reallocation across economic sectors does not automatically occur without external shocks, especially from international trade.

However, recent studies debate the importance of trade policy as more research focuses on the cost of transportation and communication in international trade and economic …

Three Essays On Natural Rates, Huseyin U. Demir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1. Non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment and Non-accelerating inflation rate of output We followed Ball and Mankiw (2002) to estimate the natural rates of output and unemployment. The primary purposes of this paper are to provide more accurate estimates of a varying non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) than currently exist and to nd a new measure for the nonaccelerating inflation rate of output so we can estimate the output gap more accurately. Our contributions are adding time-varying coefficients estimated with a break test and finding more accurate measurements for the natural rate of unemployment. We also estimated the …

Exploring The Spillover Effects Between The Cargo Market And Shipping Market: The Case Of The Dry Bulk Market, Yifeng Li

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Miamian Meets Mariel Boatlift Refugees: A Reevaluation Of The Effect Of The Mariel Boatlift, Derrick Lee

Theses and Dissertations

In the 1980s, a boatlift brought 125,000 Cuban refugees to Miami, known as the Mariel Boatlift. Using data from David Roodman’s blog and from National Bureau Economic Research and the synthetic control method, I examine the effect of the Mariel Boatlift on low-educated female non-Hispanic ages 18-65’s wages. The results suggest there is little to no effect of the Mariel Boatlift on the wages of low-educated female non-Hispanic aged 18-65.

Three Chapters On Environmental Regulation, Pollution, And Trade Liberalization, Tingsi Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation consists of three chapters in environmental economics and international trade. The first chapter identifies the effects of environmental regulation on Chinese manufacturing firms' markups. Difference-in-difference and triple-differenced estimates show that more stringent environmental regulation decreases firms' markups. Furthermore, environmental regulation has a significant impact on non-exporters' markups, but it has no impact on exporters. Examining pre-trends, we find that SOEs did not change their behavior in anticipation of environmental regulation, but non-SOEs started to adjust before the regulation was implemented. The second chapter evaluates how the market size affects the impact of environmental stringency on firms' economic activity. …

Three Essays In The Dynamics Of Oil Prices, Ahmed Alaabodi

Dissertations

The main objective of my three essays is to study the dynamics and interaction of the price of oil with the downstream sector (refined products), upstream sector (oil production), and across regional markets. I shed light on how the new technological innovation of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking that caused the shale oil revolution in the last decade impact the price of oil and impact the petroleum market in the United States.

In the first essay, the dynamic relationship between the monthly price of crude oil and its refined products is modeled. The long-run equilibrium carries valuable information for risk …

Three Essays On International Economics: Global Value Chains Of Singapore And The Cptpp; The Effects Of Oil Price Shocks On Trade, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation discusses two questions in international economics. The first two chapters focus on the matter of global value chains. We first explore the participation of Singapore in the global value chains by characterizing the position of Singapore in the global network and identifying Singapore’s key upstream and downstream trade partners. This is done at both the country aggregate and at the sector level. We trace how the country’s position in global value chains has changed in the past two decades: whether it has moved upstream or downstream, how involved it is in global value chains, how its trend compares …

Merchants Without Borders: Qusman Traders In The Arabian Gulf And Indian Ocean, C. 1850-1950, Mansour Alsharidah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a history of the economic, social, and political life in Arabia, the Arabian Gulf, and the Indian Subcontinent from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. It draws on materials from al-Qasim, Kuwait, Bahrain, Karachi, Bombay, Calcutta, and London, in addition to travelers’ accounts. These materials and accounts are used to explore the extent and significance of al-Qasim’s international trade between Arabia and India through the Arabian Gulf. It further examines how Qasimi merchants mobilized commodities and traded in the port cities of the Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, taking advantage of changing regional and global political …

Credibility And Nationalism In Narrative Economics, Dong Wang

Lingnan Theses and Dissertations (MPhil & PhD)

Narratives such as news, messages and stories can affect people’s thinking and become significant factors in decision-making. Shiller (2017) uses the term “narrative economics” to describe a new economic subfield that studies how stories people tell each other affect economic fluctuations. This thesis considers the economic and political role of narratives in newspapers and social media. It consists of three chapters. Chapter 2 examines how information credibility affects the asset pricing of stocks and cryptocurrencies under news shocks. We first apply well-trained multiclassification algorithms in machine learning to analyse data drawn from newspapers and social media. Then we calculate the …

Remittances And Development: Local Empowerment And National Dependency, Abby Foy

International Political Economy Theses

Remittances, or money that is sent by a migrant to their home country, have been increasingly viewed as a potential way to economically develop low to middle income countries. Presently, the level of remittances sent is higher than that of official developmental aid. Considering that remittances are private capital utilized by locals, the intervention of a non-profit or large international financial organization to spur developmental projects is perhaps not needed. For countries that are reliant on remittances, there are a considerable number of tradeoffs associated with this inflow of capital. Firstly, although difficult to quantify on a large scale, remittances …

The Past And The Present: Two Paradigms Of The Sino-African Investment, Emma Weirich

International Political Economy Theses

Outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) has obvious economic and political connections between the recipient and donor countries. Such investment can benefit both sides and carry certain costs to both, whether through global scrutiny or domestic struggles. This these seeks to add to the ongoing discussion of China's OFDI to Africa by comparing China's investment during its socialist period (1949-1976) and its post-socialist era (1977 – present). This comparison reveals that China's foreign policy has transitioned from a socialist paradigm to a capitalist one in the last seven decades, which brought significant changes in its OFDI policies and practice. In the …

Neoliberal Development: Capability Deprivation And Barriers For Positive Mental Health, Kate Roscher

International Political Economy Theses

Market-based approaches to development can increase the prevalence of common mental disorders around the world. Since the 1980s, the Global North has pursued neoliberal policies and has encouraged countries in the Global South to do the same. And, while these policies focused on the liberalization of markets have led to significant economic growth, they have also challenged people’s emotional well-being. Proponents of neoliberalism, or a market-based approach, are willing to make sacrifices in order to benefit from the potential efficiency of unregulated capitalism. Negative trade-offs associated with neoliberalism include: (1) increased precarity in society, (2) the prevalence of neoliberal discourse …

Do Oil Price Returns Impact Exchange Rates Fluctuations: Evidence From The Top Four Oil Importing Countries In Asia – China, India, Japan And South Korea, Alexander Nti

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

Using daily data obtained from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis database, we convert oil price and exchange rates to first difference logarithm to examine the link between oil price and exchange rates. We apply Johansen Cointegration models to examine relationship between the series, and our results indicate the variables are not cointegrated. Augmented Dicky Fuller test indicates that the series are nonstationary at level, but stationary at first difference. Impulse response analysis based on unrestricted vector autoregressive (VAR) yields varying results for the relationship between oil price and exchange rates across the currencies of the four countries considered. Thus, …

Land Policy And Welfare In China, Xin Zou

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation quantitatively studies the impact of land policy on welfare in China. There are two specific nationwide land policies of importance on which I focus: 1) The red-line policy that imposes a minimum 1.2 million square kilometers for agricultural use only 2) The zoning policy for urban land that strictly regulates the amount of industrial and residential land usages respectively; In the first chapter, I give an introduction about the land policy and institutional background in China and the related literature to my dissertation. Second chapter builds a two-sector(two-region) model to examine how the red-line policy interacts with land …

Three Essays On International Trade Policies, Xin Yi

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation studies the empirical and quantitative implications of trade policies. The first chapter examines the effects of trade policies on quality specialization across cities within a country. Specifically, we complement the quality specialization literature in international trade and study how larger cities within a country produce goods with higher quality. We first establish three stylized facts on how product quality is related to agglomeration, firm productivity, and worker skills. We then rationalize these facts in a spatial equilibrium model where all the elements mentioned above are present and firms are free to choose their locations. Using firm-level data from …

Dispute Initiation In The World Trade Organization: An Evaluation Of Trade Complaints Filed With The U.S. Trade Representative’S Office Between 1995 And 2004, Jennifer Dikler

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the determinants of dispute settlement prior to formal WTO proceedings, utilizing 2,334 complaints filed with the USTR between 1995 and 2004. My results affirm that the gravity model continues to hold explanatory power in explaining WTO dispute initiation, as do the characteristics of the barrier itself.

Mentoring Effects On Microbusiness Growth In Medellín, Colombia, Diana Herrera

Master's Theses

Microbusinesses are stagnant in growth across least developed countries due to their lack of managerial skills and limited access to the credit market. Current business methods aimed at increasing profitability for microentrepreneurs with limited capital in developing countries are only moderately successful in increasing growth. Having a mentor that has a localized business understanding can provide their mentee with the proper guidance on how to effectively manage their business to increase growth. This paper presents the results for a randomized controlled trial which identifies the average treatment effects of meeting with a mentor and observes the impact on business growth …

Income Inequality In America: Conclusions From 100 Years Of Income Tax Data And Cross-Country Comparisons, Noriel Campos

Master's Theses

In 1913, taxation of income was permanently introduced in the United States. Other similarly developed countries soon followed suit. From there, income inequality in the United States dropped significantly, and the decline in Europe was even more dramatic. First, this paper considers the changes over time of the share of national income gained by the top 1% of income earners in seven countries going back to World War Two. A second analysis considers the impact that tax policy may have had on the share of income accruing to the top 1% of U.S. income earners between 1980 and 2014, a …

The Role Of High-Fructose Corn Syrup Imports In Child And Women Obesity, Anna Subirana Bofill

Master's Theses

High Fructose Corn Syrup is believed to be responsible for the increase of the obesity epidemic that is affecting both developed and developing countries, yet to date there are no rigorous analyses that quantify this effect. To estimate the impact of consumption of HFCS on obesity, I have paired country-specific data on imports of HFCS from the United Nations International Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade) with women and child health data from around 70 countries from 1985 to 2018. The results show that conditional on space and time fixed effects, imports of HFCS with a high concentration of fructose have …

Liberté, Égalité, Manifester: Explaining The Yellow Vest Movement In France, Brady L. Cole

Honors Theses

Les Gilets Jaunes, or the yellow vests, is a movement of protestors that have had a large presence in France since 2018. Beginning as an online petition against French President Emmanuel Macron’s fuel tax hike, the movement has quickly amassed several hundred thousand protestors in Paris and other cities across the country. It is the objective of this thesis to examine potential reasons why 300,000 people have felt the need to protest throughout France, apart from the now rescinded fuel tax.

To this end, a sample of data from the Varieties of Democracy database was selected. These variables covered various …

Interest Rate Setting Behavior In The Philippines, Inigo Ugarte

Economics Student Theses and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the recent conduct of monetary policy in the Philippines and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) interest rate setting behavior. In this paper, I use a standard open economy reaction function to see whether the BSP reacts more to changes in the inflation rate, exchange rate, and or the output gap. I find that in the Philippines, the interest rate responds strongly to exchange rates. Furthermore, interest rates are less consistently explained by inflation and more accurately explained by exchange rates. This tends to suggest that the BSP goes against its inflation targeting strategy and supports a …

Imitators To Creators: The Emergence Of A Confident National Identity In Contemporary Korea As Observed Through K-Pop And Masculinity, Kaitlyn Diane Read

Honors Theses

South Korea’s national narrative has evolved from one familiar with destruction and outside control to one that can now afford to be more challenging and confrontational. Korea’s ascent to both economic and political prominence on the international landscape in record time is well established. The rapid transformation currently impacts Korean society with the country choosing to concentrate on strengthening its soft power and nation brand exporting. This thesis aims to reveal how Korea’s recently acquired position of significance on the global stage permits the Korean national identity to be assured and stimulating, in contrast with a derivative narrative once perceived …

Currency Internationalization: The Case Of The Rmb, Daniel Powell

Business and Economics Honors Papers

Currency internationalization could be considered as one of the primary facets of globalization in the modern world. Today, the US dollar accounts for nearly eighty-five percent of all global transactions, both in trade and finance. However, as China’s power has risen in the past few decades, many have pondered whether the Chinese currency, the RenMinBi (RMB), can internationalize. This study examines the literature on what components create an international currency. Then, we examine the characteristics of China’s financial markets and international relations to become familiar with the scholarly discourse surrounding China’s financial markets, international influence, and monetary stability. We then …