Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2008. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-97). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.Arch.)--University of Detroit Mercy, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 82).

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 82). Also available in print.

As trade among members of the European Union (EU) is now free of tariffs, the harmonization of technical regulations or standards has become an important issue for deeper integration of the internal market. A previous analysis of the completion of the Single Market calculated that in 1996 about 80% of intra-EU trade was been affected by harmonization of technical regulations. A major objective of this thesis is to examine to what extent harmonization of regulations has reduced the so called border effect. After a brief survey of the gravity literature, we propose and test some economic and econometric extensions of the standard gravity model. This model is then applied to total manufacturing as well as to more detailed levels corresponding to different harmonization approaches. We find that harmonization of technical regulations has a positive impact on imports of total manufacturing. However, this hardly explains the importance of border effects within the EU. This result is supported at a more disaggregated level when we distinguish between manufacturing sectors according to the type of EU harmonization including the category where technical barriers do not apply. In addition, sectors where harmonization is of minor importance exhibit smaller border effects. The last part of the thesis examines, with particular reference to EU and enlargement, how environmental regulations at the national and EU level have collided and affected exports. The major findings are that more harmonization has been accompanied by higher levels of domestic environmental regulations in candidate countries. In addition, the level of domestic environmental regulations - when treated endogenously - has a larger negative effect on EU exports. We employ a newly constructed data set that contains information at the three digit level of manufacturing industries. For each industry we identify the dominant harmonization approach used by the European Commission to the removal of technical barriers to trade in the EU.

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) prefix hijacking is a serious problem in the Internet today. Although there are several services being offered to detect a prefix hijack, there has been little work done to prevent a hijack or to continue providing network service during a prefix hijack attack. This thesis proposes a novel framework to provide defense against prefix hijacking which can be offered as a service by Content Distribution Networks and large Internet Service Providers. Our experiments revealed that the hijack success rate reduced from 90.36% to 30.53% at Tier 2, 84.65% to 10.98% at Tier 3 and 82.45% to 8.39% at Tier 4 using Autonomous Systems (ASs) of Akamai as Hijack Prevention Service Provider. We also observed that 70% of the data captured by Hijack Prevention Service Provider (HPSP) can be routed back to Victim. However if we use tunneling, i.e. trying to route data to neighbors of Victims which in turn sends the traffic to Victims, we observed that data can be routed to Victim 98.09% of the time. Also, the cost of such redirection is minimal, since the average increase in path length was observed to be 2.07 AS hops.

The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the influence that the pattern of affiliate linkages- establishments associated with companies as affiliates, subsidiaries and divisions- between U.S. states and Canadian provinces has on the effect of the border on trade between the two countries. The gravity model is used to estimate the border effect. Two hypotheses are tested – that the border effect is greater in the presence of affiliate linkages and that the strength of the border effect varies between industrial sectors. The results support the first hypothesis indicating that when all sectors combined, the presence of affiliates has a positive impact and it significantly strengthens the Canada-U.S. border effect. However, for the second hypothesis, nine sectors analyzed in this study present mixed results. For six sectors of agricultural, mineral, chemical, plastic, machinery and motor vehicle the border effect is not significantly different in the presence and absence of affiliates, while for the other three sectors of wood, textile, and base metals, the impact of affiliates has been significant. However, for wood and base metals sectors border effect has become stronger and for textile it has become weaker in the presence of affiliates. This research shows how the complicated relationship between trade and foreign direct investment determines firms operating in various sectors make decisions between export and establishing affiliates. The implication of the results can shed light on the study of the border effect and trade policy.

The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the influence that the pattern of affiliate linkages- establishments associated with companies as affiliates, subsidiaries and divisions- between U.S. states and Canadian provinces has on the effect of the border on trade between the two countries. The gravity model is used to estimate the border effect. Two hypotheses are tested – that the border effect is greater in the presence of affiliate linkages and that the strength of the border effect varies between industrial sectors. The results support the first hypothesis indicating that when all sectors combined, the presence of affiliates has a positive impact and it significantly strengthens the Canada-U.S. border effect. However, for the second hypothesis, nine sectors analyzed in this study present mixed results. For six sectors of agricultural, mineral, chemical, plastic, machinery and motor vehicle the border effect is not significantly different in the presence and absence of affiliates, while for the other three sectors of wood, textile, and base metals, the impact of affiliates has been significant. However, for wood and base metals sectors border effect has become stronger and for textile it has become weaker in the presence of affiliates. This research shows how the complicated relationship between trade and foreign direct investment determines firms operating in various sectors make decisions between export and establishing affiliates. The implication of the results can shed light on the study of the border effect and trade policy.

Since the old time, Vietnam and Mainland China have maintained a commercial relationship in the border area, due to their similarities in long-standing culture, custom, geographical location, trade and economy. Following this, the first purpose of this thesis is to look into the policies that the governments of both Vietnam and Mainland China have for the border trade and to understand the characteristics of the development in the border trade between these two countries. However, since the official statistic of international trade differs significantly between Vietnam and China, I have, therefore, encountered tremendous difficulty in data collection, filtering, and analysis. The second purpose of this thesis is to explain how the border trade influences the development of the frontier region. The influence resulted from the border trade brings both advantages and disadvantages to the two countries. The advantages lie in advancing the development, which stabilizes the lives of the border residents as well as the local government, in such fields as the infrastructure, government, inhabitants, industry, etc. As to the disadvantages, their existence prevents border trade from expanding. These disadvantages originate from such factors as smuggling, mimicry, trade deficit and so on. These unfavorable factors will have significant negative influence on policy makers¡¦ decisions about trading issues over the boarder. The issue of whether the participation in WTO of Mainland China now and the participation in NAFTA of Vietnam in the near future give an impetus to the development of the border trade or not is also included in the discussion of this thesis.

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) prefix hijacking is a serious problem in the Internet today. Although there are several services being offered to detect a prefix hijack, there has been little work done to prevent a hijack or to continue providing network service during a prefix hijack attack. This thesis proposes a novel framework to provide defense against prefix hijacking which can be offered as a service by Content Distribution Networks and large Internet Service Providers. Our experiments revealed that the hijack success rate reduced from 90.36% to 30.53% at Tier 2, 84.65% to 10.98% at Tier 3 and 82.45% to 8.39% at Tier 4 using Autonomous Systems (ASs) of Akamai as Hijack Prevention Service Provider. We also observed that 70% of the data captured by Hijack Prevention Service Provider (HPSP) can be routed back to Victim. However if we use tunneling, i.e. trying to route data to neighbors of Victims which in turn sends the traffic to Victims, we observed that data can be routed to Victim 98.09% of the time. Also, the cost of such redirection is minimal, since the average increase in path length was observed to be 2.07 AS hops.