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.

Because trade is seen as welfare improving for society, governments have long employed their policy-making powers to increase trade levels. In recent years, no strategy has been more employed by policy makers than free trade agreements. As free trade agreements become more popular, world tariff levels rapidly approach zero. Given this, policy makers must look to other methods to encourage trade. I examine how non-tariff trade barriers impact international trade levels. By better understanding these trade barriers, policy makers will be able to make more informed decisions. To better understand non-tariff trade barriers, I begin with well-known impediments to trade, including the border effect, transportation costs, and the trade creation and trade diversion effects of regional trade agreements. I then demonstrate and examine heterogeneity in these trade costs. In Chapter II I examine the often-studied border effect, the notion that regions trade more intra-nationally than internationally. I demonstrate that smaller regions are less attractive to foreign trading partners than their larger counterparts. Fixed costs of crossing an international border, as well as more effective marketing methods, mean economically larger U.S. states or Canadian provinces see a smaller border effect. In Chapter III I look at how transportation costs incurred within the exporting country impact trade levels. Using a unique instrumental variable strategy, I show that the cost of getting a good to a port is a significant hindrance to trade. Finally, in Chapter IV I show that the benefits of joining the European Union are heterogeneous across countries. This means that while the E.U. may be beneficial on average, it may not be beneficial for individual countries.

This thesis tackles issues related to regional integration, trade costs and aid, with empirical work related to the East African Community (EAC). The common thread is the impact of various types of trade costs on the structure and functioning of the economies of EAC member states. The first chapter introduces the literature and chapters 2, 3 and 4 constitute the core of the thesis. Chapter 2 develops a three-good, two-country duality-based general equilibrium model to investigate the effects of different types of aid and preferential trade on welfare and relative prices. The model is innovative in two ways: (i) a regionally tradable good is introduced, the price of which is determined endogenously, (ii) a regional infrastructure good, bought with aid monies, is brought in which lowers trade costs within the region. Using comparative statics, the properties of the model are explored in terms of the effects of tariff and aid shocks on welfare and relative prices. Chapter 3 develops a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model calibrated on Uganda and Kenya to gauge the importance of chapter 2’s results. The regional spill-over is now modeled as regional public capital serving as an input in both countries’ production functions. The simulations show how Kenya effectively exports some of the standard aid-induced real exchange rate appreciation to Uganda through a regional trade channel. Distributionally, Kenya’s urban and Uganda’s rural households win—which corresponds to regional comparative advantage patterns. Abolishing the intra-regional tariff increases welfare in Uganda and reduces it in Kenya, showing the ambiguous welfare results of Customs Unions known since Viner. Chapter 4 gauges the importance of border effects in Eastern Africa by testing the law-ofone- price (LOP) hypothesis on a consumer price data-set covering 24 goods in 39 cities in 4 countries. Using level regressions a significant border effect is found, whilst distance also plays a big role, both between and within countries. Neither the nominal exchange rate, nor non-tariff barriers (NTBs) reduce the border effect very much, even though both variables are significant. Looking at specific goods, markets for staple foods are the most integrated. As for the impact of the Customs Union between Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya (since 2005), there is a positive integration effect for the Kenya-Uganda border. Finally, Kenya’s political crisis at the end of 2007 can be linked to higher departures from the LOP throughout the region and can thus be said to have had clear knock-on effects for the landlocked EAC countries that depend on it as a transit country.

This study investigates the effect of the value of financial flexibility on bidder’s merger and acquisition (M&A) performance, including the differences between domestic and cross-border M&As and the effect of the financial crisis. Using data gathered between 2005-2012 of 3,882 M&As with the bidder from developed Europe or the U.S., OLS regressions are used to predict the effect of value of financial flexibility on the bidder’s cumulative abnormal returns (CARs). Findings reveal partial evidence to support a positive effect of the value of financial flexibility and the cross-border effect on bidder’s M&A performance. Collectively, these findings increase understanding of the interdependence of financial flexibility and investments.

This dissertation studies the effects of external integration and internal liberalization on the economic geography within a country when regions within the country have different access to the world market. The first paper introduces internal geography into the Melitz (2003) model to examine how external and internal liberalizations affect the economic geography within a country. By dividing a country into a coastal region and an inland region, the model shows that trade leads the coastal region have a higher than proportional share of industry, and causes firms in the coastal region to be larger and more productive than firms in the inland region. Both external and internal liberalizations encourage industry agglomeration in the coastal region. However, external trade liberalization leads to firm divergence, and internal liberalization leads to firm convergence, between coastal and inland regions. This allows me to test the relative importance of internal and external liberalization. Using Chinese data from 1998 to 2007, I find that the manufacturing sector grew faster in the coastal region than in the inland region after the WTO accession in 2001. Firms also converged between coastal and inland regions, indicating that internal liberalization had stronger effects during this period. In the second paper, I document large economic discontinuities across the east/non-east provincial borders in China and argue that the border effects are largely due to preferential policies that give the east advantages in international trade and economic development. Using counties contiguous to the borders of 4 plain provinces, I find that manufacturing activities (output, employment, and export) increase abruptly from the west to the east of the borders. The counties in the east also have a lower share of agricultural population and a higher share of output by foreign firms. The economic discontinuities are larger for non-state sectors than for the state sector and are stronger in non-mountain regions than in mountain regions. The large economic discontinuities are unlikely to be explained by geographic and cultural differences across the borders, and can be accounted for by the policy differences between east and non-east provinces. I find that the openness level and the index of market liberalization can account for a large part of the east/non-east divide. In the third paper, I use the ending of the Multi-fiber Arrangement (MFA) to study the effects of an external trade liberalization on Chinese textile and clothing industry. After the Multi-fiber Arrangement ended in 2005, Chinese textile and clothing exports in products that faced quotas before experienced significant boom. The effects are stronger in the coastal region than in the inland region. Using distance to the seaport as a measure of world-market access, I show that the external trade liberalization (the quota removal) had larger effects on regions with better access to the world market. A further analysis of firm entry shows that the large adjustment of export after the expiration of the MFA was largely due to destination and product expansions by existing firms.

This study examines the effect of using toeholds in domestic and cross-border acquisitionprocesses on the bidder’s acquisition performance. The sample constitutes 1,701 acquisitionsof European listed firms over the period 2003-2016. Results reveal significant evidence of anadverse effect of toeholds on the bidder’s acquisition performance. However, in cross-borderacquisitions, the use of toeholds results on average in significantly higher abnormal returns.Finally, the use of toeholds is found to be more efficient in target countries with a civil-lawsystem compared to countries with a common-law system. Overall, these findings increase ourunderstanding of management actions about the application of toeholds as an acquisitionstrategy.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This dissertation is intended to measure the size of the home bias of commerce of the state of Rio Grande do Sul from 1999 to 2010. The size of the domestic bias gaucho trade was estimated using a gravity model, encompassing variables such as income, distance, population, and dummies adjacency and border effect. Empirically, the model was estimated with panel data via pooled OLS, and the data of bilateral trade flows correspond to trade status with the brazilian federal units and the BRICS countries. The results found for the size of home bias of commerce of the state of Rio Grande do Sul via OLS indicates that trade flows gaucho state with the other brazilian federative units is about 2.23 times larger than the state of bilateral flows Rio Grande do Sul with the BRICS countries. / Essa dissertação tem por objetivo mensurar o tamanho do viés doméstico de comércio do estado do Rio Grande do Sul no período de 1999 a 2010. O tamanho do viés doméstico de comércio gaúcho foi estimado por meio do modelo de gravidade, englobando variáveis como renda, distância, população, e dummies de adjacência e efeito fronteira. Empiricamente o modelo foi estimado com dados em painel via MQO pooled, sendo que os dados de fluxos comerciais bilaterais correspondem ao comércio do estado com as unidades federativas brasileiras e para países do BRICS. O resultado encontrado para o tamanho de viés doméstico de comércio do estado do Rio Grande do Sul aponta que os fluxos comerciais do estado gaúcho com as demais unidades federativas brasileiras é cerca de 2,23 vezes maior do que os fluxos bilaterais do estado do Rio Grande do Sul com os países do BRICS.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T18:57:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 25 / Nenhuma / Esta dissertação analisa o efeito fronteira do Brasil e de suas regiões para o ano de 1999. O efeito fronteira indica o viés do comércio doméstico em comparação com o comércio internacional. Esse efeito foi estimado empiricamente, utilizando-se dados de corte seccional, em um modelo gravitacional com os 26 estados brasileiros, mais o Distrito Federal e 40 países. Apesar de o Brasil ter se engajado em um processo de abertura comercial, como o ocorrido durante a década de 90, e ter participado de Acordos Preferenciais de Comércio importantes como o Mercosul, constatou-se que o país e algumas de suas regiões apresentam elevados custos de fronteira. Os resultados encontrados indicam que o comércio entre estados brasileiros é 33 vezes superior ao comércio internacional desses estados. Para as regiões brasileiras, o efeito fronteira das regiões Norte e Nordeste, é significativamente maior daquele observado nas regiões Sul e Sudeste / This paper analyzes the border effect for Brazilian goods market and its regions in 1999. The border effect indicates the bias for domestic trade compared with international trade. This effect was quantified empirically by using cross-sectional data in a gravitational model for twenty-six Brazilian states plus the Federal District and forty other countries. Despite Brazil's involvement in commercial opening in the 90's, as well as important regional trade agreements such as Mercosul, we noticed that Brazil and some of its regions have high crossborder costs. The finding results of this equation suggest a trade 33 times higher between Brazilian states than the international trade of these states. Regarding each Brazilian region, the border effect found for intra-national trade among Northeast and North regions is significantly higher than the border effect for Southeast and Southern regions.

Geographically, Pakistan is in the western part of south Asia at about 24-37 °N latitudes and62-75 °E longitudes. Livestock and agriculture are two major sectors in Pakistan and play animportant role in the country economy.The tick infestation in livestock is not only devastating for animals and their products but alsobecome the cause of transmission of pathogens into humans. Crimean Congo fever (CCHF) isa viral tick-borne fatal disease. The dissemination of ticks and amplification of Crimean Congofever (CCHF) pathogen throughout the tick-animals-tick cycle, increases risk of transmissionto humans many times. In Pakistan, cases are reported in all areas, particularly those areaswhich lie on the border to CCHF endemic countries. There is a high prevalence of CCHF inboth Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa regions. Baluchistan is bordering with Afghanistanand Iran and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with Afghanistan. Linear regression analysis revealed apositive significant association of high level of CCHF cases in livestock, with camels, goatsand sheep. The literacy rate is negatively significantly corelated with the numbers of cases.Statistical analysis of border effect revealed a high positive significant correlation of CCHFprevalence in areas near to borders. Both Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) haslow literacy rate than other regions of Pakistan. Islamabad (capital city) has a higher literacyrate than all other regions but there is still a high CCHF prevalence. This is not only becauseof high population density but people from other regions, particularly from Baluchistan andKPK come here for animals selling or to seeking medical facilities in the large city hospitals.The study gives a proof that illiteracy and borders are the major respondent factors in theCCHF incidences and prevalence in an area. There is a need to raise awareness about ticksand tick-borne disease in the public and establishment of monitoring system across the bordersto prevent the spread of CCHF virus.