International Economics Commons^™

Chinese Economic Development And Its Global Implications, Robert T. Hill

Honors Undergraduate Theses

While Chinese economic development is often at the forefront of conversations by scholars shaping economic policy, further investigation into the state of China's economy has left a gap in research. Through analyzing the 13th Five Year Plan (FYP) and looking specifically at the effect it will have on unemployment, international trade, overcapacity rates, and the Belt and Road Initiative, the goal of this research is to understand if China will be able to obtain sustained economic growth. In order to achieve this, this research employs a qualitative discourse analysis, focusing on pre-existing works that discuss Chinese economic development. It will …

The Effect Of Outward Foreign Direct Investment On Exports In Japan During The Lost Decade, 1985-2005, Alexandros Ladas

Dissertations and Theses

This study will utilize an OLS analysis of the panel data coming from various databases such as the World Bank, Federal Reserve and etc. to determine if there exists a significant correlation between the exports of Japan and its foreign direct investment (FDI) in the period of 1985-2005 with nearby trading partners of which include the countries of ASEAN, China and South Korea. In addition, a selection of supplemental factors will be used to determine if they also possess any significance with exports. These factors include: the exchange rate of the Japanese yen with the currency of the trading partner …

The Importance Of Property Rights In The Developing World: A Study And Comparison Of Zimbabwe And Botswana, Luke A. Scarpa

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Analysis On Output Gap - Inflation Relation: The New Keynesian Approach, Oladimeji Tomiwa Shodipe

Masters Theses

The thrust of this research paper is to examine the inflation information that is contained in the output gap using the New Keynesian Phillips Curve framework. As informed by the model, the study also sets to investigate inflation persistence and the influence of forward inertia on the current inflation. This paper follows the Gali and Monacelli (2005) of the small open-economy type of model. However, the current study differs by introducing external factors (trade and real exchange rate) not only on the hybrid model, also on the backward, forward and the hybrid restricted models for time-series data (1971-2017) of all …

Three Essays On Corruption And Collusion, Arlo Redwine

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies corruption and collusion with data derived from a laboratory experiment and household data. In Chapter 1 I study experimental procurement auctions with bribery and a public reserve to test for the tacitly collusive equilibrium described by Compte et al. (2005). Three sellers compete for 40 periods to sell a single item to a computerized buyer who accepts bribes and determines ties in bids and bribes randomly. In the closing periods, only 13.5% of auctions display the collusive equilibrium, but 58.7% of selling prices are noncompetitive. In comparison with simulated predictions for auctions that are corrupt but competitive, …

Empirical Essays In Household Economics, Hao Li

Economics Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is consist of three empirical studies in economics. The first part empirically examines the effect of universal pre-k on labor force participation of fertility age women in Oklahoma. I investigate the policy effect from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. I apply the synthetic control method (SCM) to the Current Population Survey (CPS) data to identify the causal relationship between universal pre-k and female labor outcomes. I find that universal pre-k increases labor supply of women aged 25 to 45 in Oklahoma. The second empirical study focuses on how the birth outcomes of US children respond to exposure to …

Essays On Crime, Conflict, Inequality And Trade, Andres Giraldo

Economics Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three empirical essays that focus on economic development, conflict, international trade, and growth. In regard to the first two chapters on economic development, the data is taken from a developing country in which conflict and crime are not necessarily explained by ethnic diversity, Colombia. On the other hand, the chapter on trade and economic growth, it is used information from countries that signed a free trade agreement (Canada, Mexico, and United States).

In the first chapter, we evaluate the impact of quality of education on violence and crime. The paper exploits transfers of funds from the …

Literacy Rates Analysis: An International Comparison, Macarena Arce

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper attempts to provide a more complete reckoning of the economics of literacy rates around the world. It consists on a literature review about the economic benefits and costs of literacy rates and then it shows two econometrics models that attempt to predict literacy rates based on GDP, government expenditure, and several other independent variables.

The Euro Effect On Trade In The Emu Core And Periphery: A Pre And Post-Crisis Analysis, Kerri Harner

Honors Theses

As the world financial crisis hit Europe in 2008, the financial shock had asymmetric effects across the eurozone; by 2010, its effects led to a sovereign debt crisis in the euro area. The shock created a clear distinction between strong, core economies in the European Monetary Union (EMU), and a struggling indebted periphery that fared worse in the period of crisis. The sovereign debt crisis revealed inherent fragility in the EMU. In light of recent populist movements, the common currency is under unprecedented scrutiny. This study seeks to assess the euro effect on exports for a clearly distinguished EMU core …

The Role Of Conflict In Sub-Saharan Africa, Samy Lemos

CMC Senior Theses

Sub-Saharan Africa is the provider of many critical natural resources. With such resources, one would expect these countries to have thriving economies. Why is the opposite case true? To answer such a question, this paper examines a few critical causes that may justify the current economic situation these African countries are experiencing. Specifically, the paper observes the economic impact of civil war and terrorist conflict in sub-Saharan Africa from 1971 to 2016. To explore the changes in GDP per capita for all these years, this thesis sheds light on three independent variables: year of conflict, education level, and foreign direct …

Individual And Household-Level Effects Of Energy Poverty On Human Development, Brandon Bridge

Economics ETDs

This study investigates some of the predictors of energy poverty, the interrelationships between different expressions of energy poverty, and the human development impacts of energy poverty on primarily rural individuals and households in an underdeveloped country. It uses data from four rounds of Nicaragua's Living Standards Measurement Survey, and examines the effects of energy poverty on income, education, and health.

Chapter 1 provides background information on energy poverty in general, as well as the specific situation that has developed in Nicaragua. It also provides a modeling framework, both conceptual and mathematical, for the ways in which energy poverty impacts human …

The Viability Of Profit-Loss Sharing Models To Finance Small And Medium Enterprises: The Case Of Saudi Arabia, Alhanoof Alghamdi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to explore the role of profit-loss sharing (PLS) models to alleviate access to finance for small and medium enterprises in Saudi Arabia, in the light of the stringent requirements of traditional financial institutions, to ensure the growth and development of the SME sector. A central question of this study is the extent to which Islamic banks can adopt profit-loss sharing modes to finance SMEs. The main results present the barriers preventing Islamic banks from the application of profit-loss sharing that increase incidence of agency problems for such institutions. High asymmetry of information and the nature of Islamic …

A Survey Of The Cuban Government’S Prospects Of Attracting Foreign Direct Investment., Philip Moore

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

European Union Membership And Levels Of Corruption, Kevin J. Morris

The Corinthian

Recent accessions to the European Union (E.U.) membership have been met with protests as critics noted the widespread corruption still rampant in both recent and established member countries. Given the global ramifications of the debt crises in Italy, Spain, and Greece, determining the efficacy of the E.U. Accession Reforms and Membership Criteria on corruption reduction is vitally important. Using European and Central Asian country-level data from the World Bank’s Global Development and Global Indicator database regional-level fixed effects, I estimate the impact of EU membership on corruption levels and find that E.U. membership has a small, but significant impact on …

The Economic Impact Of Lifting Sanctions On Iran: How The Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action Will Affect The Economy Of Iran, Ryan Foley

Washington Semester Program

During the second term of the Obama Administration, the United States and the European Union negotiated a deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding their nuclear program. These negotiations encompassed the relaxing of sanctions on the Iranian economy in exchange for concessions on the part of their nuclear program. This thesis investigates how the deal will affect the economy of Iran and the international oil market, two entities which are deeply intertwined. The findings suggest that the opening of Iran’s economy will almost certainly lead to a strengthening of their domestic economy in the short-term, but that the government …

Three Essays On Capital Regulations And Shadow Banking, Diny Ghuzini

Dissertations

The shadow banking sector is a sector that is comprised of financial intermediaries that do not have access to central bank funds and performs their activities outside the regular banking system. This sector had been rapidly growing in most developed economies. This dissertation focuses on the behavioral difference and interaction of the traditional and shadow banking sectors as displayed by the relative asset position of both sectors, their risk-taking positions, and their business-cycles properties.

The first essay examines the impact of minimum capital requirements on the share of shadow to total banking assets. Previous literature has argued that increased regulation …

The Impact Of Foreign Direct Investment On Labor Market Measures: Evidence From Sub-Saharan Africa, David A. Mayom

Master's Theses

There is scant literature examining the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and labor market measures in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. This paper explores the effect of FDI on the labor market measures using panel data of 48 Sub-Saharan African Countries from 1991 to 2009. The result indicates that FDI has a positive and significant effect on employment implying that an increase in the inflow of FDI is associated with higher employment. Thus, Sub-Saharan African governments should strongly consider poverty alleviation and employment policies that encourage and direct FDI to the industries where it can significantly reduce unemployment.

Mega-Regional Trade, Joshua Meltzer

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

This lecture will discuss the impact of the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations on U.S. economic competitiveness and leadership in Asia and Europe. This will lead into a discussion of large Free Trade Areas (FTA), or groups of countries that have few or no price controls in the form of tariffs or quotas between each other. FTAs allow the agreeing nations to focus on their comparative advantages and to produce the goods they are comparatively more efficient at making, thus increasing the efficiency and profitability of each country. We will explore the impact …

The Face Of The Market, Thomas Woodcock

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis reviews the effect on economic openness that can be established by the presence of strong Global Compact local networks. The work identifies three measures of openness and four sets of domestic conditions in which the Global Compact operates, respectively: (1) prevalence of trade, (2) measures of foreign direct investment and foreign portfolio investment and (3) policy indicators of openness, in respect to democracies with (a) strong local networks or (b) weak local networks, as well as autocratic regimes with (c) strong or (d) weak local networks. A comparative study follows, looking at twenty-three years of data across fifty …

China-Based Industrial Espionage, Joel Savary

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

On Oct 8, 2014 China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest economy in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)” (IMF). My paper explores one of the instances of unlawful business practices that have contributed to China’s new world position. China based espionage undercuts American businesses and U.S. foreign policy directly, causing catastrophic economic implications for America, its businesses, and its allies. The U.S. government is grappling with the means and methods China uses to disseminate information stolen from U.S. businesses to support China based industries. Due to the lack of transparency in China, it has been difficult …

Typhoons And Lower Birth Weight In The Philippines, Sarah Morrow

Master's Theses

Do typhoons impact birth weights of infants exposed to a typhoon while in utero? This research exploits the exogeneity and randomness of typhoons in the Philippines to estimate the impact of typhoon exposure as determined by wind speed on birth weights. Using four waves of the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from the Philippines combined with temperature, precipitation, and rainfall data from the Philippines, I can empirically estimate the impact of a 1 m/s increase in wind speed on birth weights. I find that for certain subgroups of the population, specifically children born to mothers with primary education or …

International Migration And Economic Development Of Global Metropolitan Areas, Neil Ruiz

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

International migration is a global and local development issue. Migrants across international borders are transformative agents with economic, social, and political ties to origins and destinations. Migrants are the agents that link local economies through global flows of knowledge, trade, capital, and production. Through their networks, international migrants serve as valuable bridges between U.S. metropolitan areas and regional economies in other countries, and can facilitate trade networks through exports, imports, or the circulation of knowledge and the production process.

International Political Economy: How Does Freedom Correlate With Economic Success?, Trevis Harrold

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

It is thought by many that the size of a nation's economy determines the amount and kind of services that any individual in that nation can access. This paper explores how freedom affects a country's economic success in terms of GDP per capita. The conclusions are that the amount of freedom a country has, as determined by Freedom house measures, does have an effect on Gross Domestic Product per Capita.

Generally, the more freedom a country has the higher the GDP per capita is. Countries should promote and establish free regimes in order to have the best economic output. In …

The International Monetary Fund, Power Politics, And The Changing Political Economy Of The Twenty First Century, Eduardo Flores

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The governance of the global economy is in a constant state of change. Since the creation of the Bretton Woods system, the International Monetary Fund has had to pursue a series of reforms to meet the changing demands of the international monetary system. At times, the Fund's institutional design has been adjusted to reflect the rise and decline in economic fortunes of member states. Other times the Fund has been resistant to change. However, the original design has proved to be durable and has overcome a number of historical challenges. Currently, two realities are challenging the institutional design of the …

Terrorism And Illicit Drug Prices: Does A Drug-Terror Nexus Exist? A Regression Analysis Of The Relationship Between Illicit Drug Prices And Terrorist Events, Abigail Burnette

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Since the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, global counterterrorism policies have increasingly targeted terrorist financing sources. These increased financial counterterrorism regulations have diverted the traditional sources and methods of terrorist funding, including illicit drug revenue streams. The purpose of this paper is to measure the relationship between terrorist events (both domestic and transnational) and the prices of cocaine and heroin. Using regression analysis, I find that the annual U.S. illicit drug prices of heroin are statistically significant with domestic and transnational terrorist events. These results suggest that future counterterrorism policies should continue to be used in …

Entropy-Based Analysis And Bioinformatics-Inspired Integration Of Global Economic Information Transfer, Jinkyu Kim, Gunn Kim, Sungbae An, Young-Kyun Kwon, Sungroh Yoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

The assessment of information transfer in the global economic network helps to understand the current environment and the outlook of an economy. Most approaches on global networks extract information transfer based mainly on a single variable. This paper establishes an entirely new bioinformatics-inspired approach to integrating information transfer derived from multiple variables and develops an international economic network accordingly. In the proposed methodology, we first construct the transfer entropies (TEs) between various intra- and inter-country pairs of economic time series variables, test their significances, and then use a weighted sum approach to aggregate information captured in each TE. Through a …

American Influence In The International Financial Institutions, Shawn Rosen, Jonathan R. Strand

McNair Poster Presentations

As the world becomes more globalized and the prosperity of new, rising powers begins to challenge that of long-standing powers, many scholars and policy-makers have begun to examine America’s place in the global political economy. Ongoing changes in the world politi­cal economy such as the flourishing economies in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), continued integration in Europe, as well as questions about eco­nomic policies derived from American dominated neoliberal ideology have raised many doubts regarding how long the United States can remain the world leader. The conventional wisdom holds that the United States has enough …

Designing International Institutions For Global Security, Rupayan Gupta

Fall 2012 Faculty Showcase

This talk focuses on the challenges inherent in designing international institutions for global security. The area of inquiry is interdisciplinary in nature, incorporating insights from economics, international relations, and mathematics (game theory). It is argued that this line of research would benefit from greater incorporation of techniques from bargaining theory and mechanism design. An agenda is proposed for interdisciplinary collaboration and some interesting results are presented from author’s published and ongoing research.

International Political Economy Reference Sources: An Annotated Bibliography, Theodore C. Schwitzner, Chad M. Kahl

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

International political economy is an emerging yet specialized field that combines political analysis with the study of markets, trade, and development. With the global economy having an interdependent effect on politics, environment, and society, and with several major economic events of the last 20 years, the authors perceived a need to provide a guide to the sources in this field. This paper seeks to address this issue. The authors identified resources using WorldCat and standard reference sources, such as American Library Association's Guide to Reference Books; the annual American Libraries’ “Outstanding Reference Sources” articles; American Reference Books Annual (ARBA) volumes; …

Returns From Self-Employment: Using Human Capital Theory To Compare U.S. Natives And Immigrants, Nikola Popovic

Undergraduate Economic Review

The focus of this paper is to examine the economic returns from self-employment when comparing natives and immigrants. I hypothesize that returns from self-employment will increase with age and education, and that immigrants from China, India, and the Philippines will have higher returns while immigrants from Mexico will have lower returns than natives. I also hypothesize that immigrants with high levels of education will earn more than natives with the same amount of education. The OLS regressions show that human capital variables explain the differences in self-employed income between natives and immigrants, as the literature suggests.