This thesis begins with a review of the elite debate over free trade with the United States. It then uses a three-fold theoretical framework to formulate predictions of how mass opinion should line up. It then analyzes public opinion data on free trade through the use of crosstabulations. Using a theory of changing exposure to international trade upon domestic political cleavages formulated by Ronald Rogowski, it predicts that labour will oppose free trade because it is a scarce factor of production, and capital will support it because it is an abundant factor of production. It next uses work by, among others, W.A. Mackintosh to predict that respondents in the "industrial heartland" regions of Canada--Quebec and Ontario--will oppose free trade because it threatens to remove the protective tariff that rewards import replacement industries concentrated in those two regions. In contrast, residents of the "resource extracting and processing hinterland" regions—British Columbia, the Prairies and the Atlantic—will, on balance, support free trade because it promises to improve their export performance. The thesis then predicts that women and lower income Canadians will oppose free trade. Women because many of the services that they consume—health and day care, for example—will become more difficult to obtain under a free trade regime. Women will also oppose free trade because it may be threaten the service sector jobs that many women now hold. Lower income Canadians should oppose free trade because of the possible deleterious effects greater reliance on the market to allocate social services could have on poorer Canadians. Finally, the thesis predicts that better-educated Canadians will oppose free trade because it threatens one of the "core-values" of Canadian society: independence from the United States. Data analysis reveals, however, that opinion is remarkably balanced. For example, the difference between union and non-union respondents is only five percent. Regionally, the largest differences in support for free trade is between British Columbia and Ontario, but it amounts to little more than a twenty percent difference. Women are slightly more likely to oppose free trade than men; income appears to play little role in the formation of opinion on free trade. Last, differences in opinion between articulate and less well educated Canadians also appears to be insignificant. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of the study is to make a survey and analysis of the export trade of the United States with Mexico. Attention is given to the kinds and types of goods exported to Mexico and imported from it, to the value of the trade, to some ways of carrying it on, and to aspects of Mexican life that influence trade relations.

No description available.

No description available.

This research was undertaken to provide a quantitative assessment of the impact of a Canada/U.S. free trade agreement on six B.C. food and beverage processing industries. The objective was achieved by building a partial equilibrium model simulating changes in trade policy. The six industries were modelled as oligopolists in which the degree of oligopolistic behaviour and the industries' characteristics were captured through specified parameters. Following the abolition of trade barriers the model allowed the industries to rationalize, where necessary, and the highest-cost firms in an industry left for the benefit of lower-cost ones. The final effect is measured for each industry through changes in output, employment, trade volume and prices. As different policy scenarios have been simulated for each industry, the results obtained are quite diverse but they generally follow the a priori expectations. In open industries such as meat, fruit and vegetable and flour mixes, results, however differents for each scenario, tend to leave the industries in a better off or no worse off situation. For heavily protected industries like dairy and poultry, very sensitive to the elimination or not of the quota system, the range of possible results between the scenarios is pronounced. It was concluded that the final effect of the abolition of trade barriers on each industry cannot be assessed specifically but in rather general terms. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

No description available.

University of Macau / Faculty of Business Administration / Department of Management and Marketing

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Government and Public Administration

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Government and Public Administration

M.Com. (Financial Economics) / The main objective of this mini dissertation is to examine the effect of exchange rate volatility on international trade. The finding of this mini dissertation is however that the impact of exchange rate volatility on international trade could be either positive or negative depending on various reasons that will be discussed when the arguments of the theorists that have either found a positive, negative and sometimes indeterminate effect of exchange rate volatility on international trade are discussed. The focus of this mini dissertation will be on the manufacturing trade between the Republic of South Africa with the United States and China. The need for an analysis of exchange rate volatility on international trade arises from the fact that firstly no consensus has been reached on the true effect of exchange rate volatility on international trade and secondly knowledge of what the true effect of exchange rate volatility is on international trade could assist in drafting the appropriate policies at government level. The finding of this mini dissertation represents a challenge for policy recommendations as it reflects the fact that various industries, sectors and subsectors of the economy of the Republic of South Africa are impacted differently by the volatility of the Rand/Yuan and Rand/Dollar exchange rates, respectively, therefore any policy that is drawn up to improve international trade needs to be done on an individual basis for each industry, sector and subsector respectively taking into account the various dynamics and characteristics of each. Firstly in the literature review a detailed discussion of both sides of the exchange rate volatility debate will be outlined. It would be shown why there is a lack of consensus when it comes to the issue of what effect exchange rate volatility has on international trade. On the one hand the argument of those suggest that exchange rate volatility hampers international trade or has a negative effect on international trade, such as Sekantsi, (2008); Onafowora and Owoye, (2008); Chit, (2010); Vergil, (2008); Arize et al, (2000); Arize and Malindretos, (2002); Klaasen, (2004) and Doganlar, (2002), will be reviewed. The argument of those that say that in fact exchange rate volatility has no impact on international trade, such as Raddatz, (2008); Frankel, (2007); Arize and Malindretos, (2002); Arize et al, (2000); Klaasen, (2004); Chowdhury, (1993) and Hassan and Sukar, (1999), will also be reviewed. This discussion and the results that arise from exploring this debate have very important implications on the recommendations that are passed on to government to be considered when drafting policies, such as the New Growth Path (NGP). Secondly when the background of the manufacturing industry in South Africa is discussed, all the initiatives and policies such as the NGP that government has planned and put in place in order to rejuvenate the manufacturing industry will be outlined. The impact of exchange rate volatility on international trade has a direct impact on these policies. Recommendations regarding how best enhance the policies to rejuvenate the manufacturing industry cannot be possibly made when consensus about the impact of exchange rate volatility has not be reached. For this reason it was it imperative that the true impact of exchange rate volatility on international trade be made clear.