Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / China's growing economic dynamism has made it a powerful actor in the globalized economy. Continued growth of China's economy requires guaranteed sea access to foreign energy resources and markets. In response to the need for sea access, the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is undergoing an expansion and force modernization process intended to ensure China's access to vital sea lines of communications (SLOCs). In recent history, post-Meiji Restoration Japan and early twentieth century Germany provide two examples of the impact of rising economic powers with expansive maritime strategies. In both cases, efforts by regional competitors to maintain relatively superior naval forces led to heightened tensions and, ultimately, war. Through the unintended promotion of regional naval arms races, both the Empire of Japan and the German Empire contributed to the destabilization of their respective region's security. This thesis argues that, based on the historical record of competitive naval growth, an expanding PLAN will destabilize East Asia as China challenges the dominance of the leading naval power in the Western Pacific -- the United States Navy. However, China's rise differs from the rise of Japan and Germany in important ways. Diplomatic efforts by Washington and Beijing to identify shared maritime interests can serve to alleviate the destabilizing effects associated with naval growth. Additionally, security tensions associated with naval arms races may be mitigated through a thorough U.S. analysis of the actual threat posed by China's growing naval power. / Outstanding Thesis / US Navy (USN) author.

M.B.A. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Marketing / Las transacciones trade-ins involucran la compra de un modelo nuevo de un producto y simultáneamente la venta de una versión más antigua del mismo producto. En la literatura sobre preferencias de pago en trade-ins se establece que en general a la hora de transar los consumidores prefieren ser “sobrepagados” por su antiguo modelo que entregan en forma de pago, aun cuando ese sobre precio resulte en que le cobren un precio excesivamente alto por el modelo nuevo que desea adquirir. (Purohit 1995; Zhu, Chen y Dasgupta 2008). Dado este antecedente, el objetivo de esta tesis es examinar como la preferencia de pago de los consumidores se ve afectada por la diferencia de precios entre el producto usado y el producto nuevo, considerando explícitamente el rol del apego emocional con el producto usado, el valor económico del bien a transar, dada su importancia relativa en la pérdida de dotación y la experiencia previa del consumidor realizando trade-ins. Se logra obtener evidencia que estipula que existe una relación positiva y significativa con las variables diferencia de precios, apego emocional y valor del bien con las preferencias de pago. El hallazgo con respecto a la relación con el apego emocional es una contribución clave a la literatura, dado que no existían estudios previos que lo expliciten. La relevancia de esta tesis radica en las contribuciones en el estudio de los trade-ins. En primer lugar, es un aporte a la literatura en marketing pues demuestra que no sólo los consumidores prefieren que les sobrepaguen (Purohit 1995; Zhu, Chen y Dasgupta 2008) sino también existe una opción donde se revierte la condición y se prefiere ser subpagado, en función de factores como la diferencia de precio y el apego emocional hacia el producto usado. En segundo lugar, se estudia el caso donde el consumidor tiene un rol dual en la transacción (comprador y vendedor simultáneamente) y no sólo estando en un extremo. En tercer lugar, se establece el rol del apego mediado por la experiencia previa del consumidor y la influencia del valor del bien en sus preferencias de pago, factores que no han sido previamente estudiados en la literatura.

Thesis advisor: James E. Anderson / The world is still far from flat today. A large literature finds that there is too little international trade and too much intra-national trade. The vast majority of country pairs even do not trade at all. Borders and distance impede trade by much more than tariffs or transports costs can explain. Although other sources of resistance, such as taste, information, culture, and so on, have been discussed, it is difficult to measure and model them. My doctoral research examines the big question "What various resistances lead to the wide gap between reality and full globalization?" The first chapter focuses on how important the home-biased preference is for the home-biased consumption. In the second chapter, which is joint work with James Anderson, we study which of the iceberg and fixed trade cost accounts more for the international trade zeros. Finally, in the third chapter coauthored with Ben Li, we study how the country geographical heterogeneity affects international trade, as well as the global geopolitics. Chapter 1 relaxes the assumption of the representative consumer to heterogeneous ethnic consumers in terms of taste biases. More specifically, any given consumer has a taste biased towards the good produced by her country of origin wherever she currently resides in the world. Thus consumers are heterogeneous in terms of how large their taste biases are. I extend the structural gravity model by building and estimating a structural component of home-biased preferences. The gravity model generates bilateral trade shares with three distinct components: ethnic composition of resident population, bilateral trade cost, and per capita income. Market taste depends in part on the ethnic origin of consumers. When ethnicities are home-biased in tastes, migration promotes trade with countries of origin. Using international trade and transnational migration data among 40 countries, this paper estimates the home bias of each ethnic group in tastes. The results show that consumers' tastes for products from their country of origin deviate from unbiased levels by 40 percent on average. Large and poor ethnicities are more biased in their tastes. Ethnic taste bias is found to explain 64 percent of the home bias in trade. Chapter 2 identifies the extent to which zero trade flows is explained by variable and fixed trade cost, respectively. This job is important because variable and fixed trade cost play different roles in shaping zero trade flows and thus imply different trade policies to stimulate the trade to occur. Despite the enormous growth in global trade, most countries still do not trade with one other. Choke prices that shut off demand are suggested by the prevalence of zeros in disaggregated bilateral trade flows. We find the variation of price elasticities is even larger than income elasticities. On average, VC's effect on trade probability is much larger than FC's effect. The variable trade cost is more important than the fixed trade cost to explain the international trade zeros. Chapter 3 finds that since the Age of Discovery, the world has become economically integrated while remaining politically disintegrated as a collection of nation-states. The nation-state system is robust because borders, which divide the world landmass into states, interact with economic integration to absorb shocks. We build a tractable general equilibrium model of international trade and national borders in the world. Over a long time horizon, declining trade costs alter trade volumes across states but also incentivize states to redraw borders, causing states to form, change, and dissolve. Our model has significant implications for the global economy and politics, including trade patterns, political geography, state-size distribution, and the risks of militarized disputes. These implications are supported by modern and historical data. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 1963. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-90). Also available on the World Wide Web.

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Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 1970. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-91). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Since the inception of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, tariff restriction to U.S. poultry products entering the Mexican market has decreased significantly. While poultry trade from the U.S. to Mexico has increased considerably, Mexican chicken exports to the U.S. face a sanitary restriction. This concerns chicken producers in Mexico. Consequently, the Mexican government negotiated with the U.S. government an extension, from 2003 to 2008, of the tariff rate quota (TRQ) on U.S. chicken leg quarters entering the Mexican market. The purpose of this study was to estimate the economic impact of trade policies restricting the chicken trade between Mexico and the U.S. Two trade policy scenarios were analyzed: (1) a removal of the Mexican tariff rate quota (TRQ) on U.S. chicken leg quarters, and (2) a removal of the TRQ and, in addition, a removal of the U.S. sanitary restrictions to Mexican chicken. A cost minimization mathematical programming model was used to estimate the optimum levels of production, consumption and trade, subject to policy restrictions. The study found that if the Mexican TRQ on U.S. chicken leg quarters is eliminated, chicken production in Mexico would shrink by 51% compared to the actual level of production as of 2003. A less drastic effect on Mexican production of chicken was found when, in addition to the TRQ removal, the U.S. sanitary restriction on Mexican chicken is eliminated. In this second scenario total production in Mexico would decrease by 24%. Under both scenarios chicken production in the U.S. is estimated to have an increase, 8% and 4% for the first and second scenarios, respectively. These new levels of production would affect trade levels and prices for chicken and chicken parts in both countries.

Endogenous tariff formation has been the subject of theoretical studies that attempt to determine the fundamental economic variables that influence the structure of industry protection implemented by international trade policy makers. An empirical analysis of endogenous tariff formation under the framework of a regional trade agreement implemented by the Andean Community Group is offered in this dissertation. Econometric models for the group’s common external tariff (CET) and for individual country tariff deviations with respect to the CET are estimated. The analysis is based on cross-sectional industrial and trade data for 1996, collected at four digit level of aggregation. The level of aggregation refers to the specific definition of industrial sectors included in the International Standard Industrial Code (ISIC). While previous studies on another regional integrated group in South America (MERCOSUR) use data at the three digit level, the aggregation used in this research implies a significant increase in the sample size, and also a more homogeneous specification regarding the composition of the industrial sectors under analysis. The causal links among the variables are obtained by using the directed acyclical graphs (DAGs) approach. This allows for a refined search for causal relationships. The approach is particularly appealing for the analysis of endogenous trade protection since it allows analyzing economic systems that involve policy intervention. The empirical analysis supports several of the classic theoretical models on trade protection. The results are consistent with the equity concern model, which suggests that governments tend to protect industrial sectors that employ a significant number of low wage unskilled workers. The estimated models also support the interest group and the adding machine theoretical formulations. However, a rather interesting result derived from the DAG analysis is the feedback interaction that seems to operate between tariffs and policy variables. The current literature restricts the estimation of trade protection by imposing tariffs as the dependent variable with no reverse effect from this variable to the policy variables. Our results challenge this unidirectional causality view, since an effect from tariffs to the policy variables shows up in most of the estimated specifications.