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This thesis focuses on how trade openness influences the average annual growth rates of developing countries in Latin America and Asia. We find that there is a positive correlation between trade openness and economic growth and this indicates the positive impact that can be made by governments through efforts to stimulate growth with trade. We construct a simple regression model to highlight the positive association between trade openness and economic growth and add several control variables such as initial GDP per capita and gross domestic investment. We use a sample of 33 developing countries in Asia and Latin America to test the relationships. Our results confirm a positive relationship between trade openness and growth, as well as a negative correlation between initial GDP per capita and economic growth which means that poorer countries grow faster. We also find a positive correlation between the level of investment and growth. In addition to testing the relationship between trade openness and rate of growth generally, we also conduct a regression to examine if there is a significant difference in this effect between Asia and Latin America. We introduce regional dummy variables and interaction terms into the new regression and find that the impacts of trade on growth are not significantly different between these two regions.

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Arts

The primary purpose of this study is to develop a realistic model of an oil company which can be used to evaluate alternative systems of petroleum accounting. The model is used to simulate several accounting variables produced by the full cost and successful efforts methods of accounting. The simulated accounting variables are net operating income, net oil properties, operating expenses and return on investment. This study also evaluates the oil company models used in prior petroleum accounting research. There are currently two systems of petroleum accounting (full cost accounting and successful efforts accounting) that are generally accepted. The full cost method basically requires the capitalization of all exploration and development costs while the successful efforts method does not permit the capitalization of either geological survey costs or the costs of dry exploratory wells. A petroleum accounting model should satisfy three requirements. The model should incorporate all significant revenues and expenditures. The values of these revenues and expenditures should be realistic and the timing of the business transactions must be realistic. Earlier accounting studies employed deterministic and stochastic models which failed to satisfy one or more of the three requirements of a petroleum accounting model. Because there are many significant differences between these models and the oil companies which they claim to represent, the findings of these studies cannot be considered to be realistic. The model developed for this study represents the exploration, development and production activities of an oil company. Multinomial probability distributions are used to model exploratory drilling success. A binomial distribution is used to model development drilling success. Exponential decline curves are used to represent oil production. The model displays the type of behavior that is predicted by the economic theory of exhaustible resources and it satisfies the three modeling requirements stated previously.

The Conservative governments of 1979-1997 were determined to reduce what they saw as "excessive union power". A succession of Employment and Trade Union Acts designed to undermine collective organisation and therefore trade union power were passed. The common perception tends to be that trade union power has been severely curtailed; however, some researchers suggest that very little has changed on the shopfloor. The main aim of the research was to ascertain what trade union members thought about the power of their trade unions. The focus of the study was on the local and workplace union organisations of the ABEU and UNISON. The research involved a case study approach. Data was obtained through the use of observation, interviews, questionnaires and the analysis of documentary evidence. It is concluded that trade union power is still a reality in the 199Os, though that power may be looked upon differently depending whether the focus is on unions at a national level or within the workplace. National unions may have changed but workplace organisations appear to remain much the same as they always have; some workplace organisations are effective and others do not appear to be as successful at achieving their aims. The success of workplace trade unionism is dependent upon the personalities and styles of working of the lay representatives. The legislation appears to have had little effect on independent workplace union organisations, though claims that the legislation had reduced trade union power appear to have been taken at face value, even by union members. As long as effective lay representatives are forthcoming there is no reason why unions at workplace level should not continue protecting their members' interests well into the 21st century.

In a world that is moving at a feverish pace toward regional economic integration, much has yet to be understood about the process. In particular, research that delineates key factors in preventing, mitigating or resolving trade conflicts that arise between integration partners is in want. In the hope of contributing to filling this academic vacuum, this paper compares conflicts in different integration frameworks in North America and Europe. The cases are the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute, an anti-dumping case involving the Nordic countries, a state aid conflict in Germany, and conflicts over export and import restrictions in the Slovak Republic and Poland respectively. Information on these cases was obtained from primary and secondary sources, as well as from interviews with officials in key stakeholder groups. These cases are assessed using variables of analysis familiar to integration theorists, namely, actors, mechanisms, and motivations. It is found that subnational actors were more likely than national or supranational actors to instigate and escalate conflicts. It is also found that the accessibility of multiple dispute resolution processes to actors at multiple levels were important in preventing, mitigating and resolving conflicts. From these findings, it is concluded that the multi-level governance theory of integration is better suited to explain the outcome than neofunctionalism or intergovernmentalism. These findings have significant implications for the management of relationships in integration frameworks.

The Free Trade Area of the Americas is a proposed treaty that would encompass the Western Hemisphere-800 million people and a 13 trillion dollar economy. It is a regional agreement that cannot be understood without the interrelated issues at both the international and domestic level. The single most important issue that resides at the nexus of all three of these levels is domestic subsidies on agriculture. FTAA cannot move forward at the regional level without reduction in the U.S. domestic subsidies. The United States is not willing to reduce its domestic protection without reciprocal reductions from the European Union, specifically, France. Even if international agreement is reached, the domestic level interest group politics must be factored in. Furthermore, the clock is ticking at the domestic level with both the President's Trade Promotion Authority set to expire along with the Farm Bill in 2007. The final analysis will indicate international negotiations will not yield enough genuine concessions soon enough to break the regional level loggerheads and that domestic interest group politics will not allow unreciprocated unilateral reductions to break that stalemate either. Free Trade in the Western Hemisphere is, therefore, likely to continue to progress as a series of subregional and bilateral agreements.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / This dissertation comprises three chapters on the network structure of the economy and its macroeconomic consequences. In the first two chapters, I analyze the relationship between macroeconomic volatility of individual countries and the international trade network the countries are embedded in. In the third chapter, I study the international migration network. In the first chapter, I show a regularity that European countries occupying more central positions in the intra-Europe trade network exhibit lower macroeconomic volatility. Intuitively the trade network has a core-periphery structure and the core is more stable than the periphery. This is puzzling because the core country is also more open to shocks coming from all other countries, which increases volatility. This relationship is informative in the context of the unsettled, classic debate on whether trade openness increases or decreases country-level volatility. Rather than considering an aggregate measure like trade openness, the idea of centrality provides a more comprehensive measure of the nature and strength of trade linkages as well as the identity of the trade partners, all of which have important effects on volatility. I construct a multi-country, multi-sector model subject to idiosyncratic productivity and liquidity shocks, and fully characterize the trade network generated in equilibrium. I calibrate the model to the European Union and I show that it closely replicates the observed negative relationship. Next, I extend the theory presented to incorporate a general network structure and its effects on volatility. From an empirical perspective, I construct an instrument based on geographic distance to establish the finding. From a theoretical perspective, I consider the possibilities of missing linkages and stochastic weights in the trade networks. The third chapter studies the European immobility puzzle. A theory of cross-country migration is devised in the form of labor mobility based on regional and sectoral productivity shocks in a multi-country, multi-sector setting. Differences across countries in socio-cultural and institutional factors induce a friction on such labor reallocation process. The model explains interstate migration network within the U. S. (frictionless benchmark) well. When applied to Europe, the model predicts a sizeable missing mass of migrants. Our estimates show this to be due to socio-cultural barriers.