<p> Lightweight thermal paper (LWTP) is a noteworthy import commodity with wide usage and large import value in the United States. In this study, the trade pattern and market dynamics of the LWTP import market in the U.S. has been examined based on almost ideal demand system. The results revealed that both the trade volume and import source of LWTP had changed during last decade. Competition relationships were found among major suppliers in both the short run and long run, and the long-run competition is stronger than that in the short run. The repeal of restriction on conducting countervailing investigation against non-market economy temporarily stimulated the import of LWTP products from China, but the following antidumping/countervailing investigation and the corresponding punitive duties generated trade depression effect on the imports. In addition, positive trade diversion effect was found on German products, which raises doubt on the effectiveness of this trade remedy policy. </p>

<p> The emergence of climate change as one of the most pressing challenges of the 21^st century has placed the task of reducing GHG emissions at the forefront of city, state and national government agendas around the world. Strategies for transitioning to a clean energy future almost universally involve increasing the share of electricity generated from renewable sources, reducing emissions from the transportation sector and improving energy efficiency. This dissertation contains three essays that address policy questions within each of these areas (renewables, efficiency and transportation), focusing both on past experiences thus far as well as considerations for future policies. The first chapter examines the Danish wind power industry and the role of government policies in shaping the decisions of wind turbine owners. A structural dynamic model is constructed in which owners decide whether and when to add new turbines to a pre-existing stock, scrap an existing turbine, or replace old turbines with newer versions during a period of rapid technological improvement and several changes to government wind energy policies. Results from the model indicate that the growth and development of the Danish wind industry was primarily driven by government policies as opposed to technological improvements. The second chapter explores the spatial and distributional impacts of climate policies in the transportation sector. California VMT and fuel consumption distributions are not symmetric and can vary significantly within transit planning regions. Results show that analyzing a policy using mean VMT or fuel consumption and assuming a symmetric distribution would generally lead to errors of 20-40% when considering the costs of a climate policy for a &ldquo;typical&rdquo; household. The final chapter addresses the role of publicly-funded energy efficiency programs in electricity markets. In the absence of energy efficiency programs, individual households and businesses may underinvest in energy efficiency because of inefficient retail pricing, pollution and learning externalities, imperfect information and the prevalence of principal-agent problems. California's cap-and-trade program and likely transition to dynamic pricing will correct some of these market failures, but information problems and distributional concerns will remain and warrant programs that encourage additional investments in efficiency.</p>

Thesis advisor: Harold Petersen / By now, it is no secret to the global community that the many African countries lag far behind the rest of the world in terms of poverty rates, life expectancy, standard of living, per capita income, health, GDP and economic growth. This thesis examines the economic impact of HIV/AIDS on African economies and the potential for debt relief to mitigate some of the negative impacts of HIV/AIDS on African economies. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2006. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program.

The purpose of this study is to provide an effective direction for the development and management of the enterprise zone program. This study stems from a basic question: Is the enterprise zone program an effective tool for local economic development? To examine the effectiveness of the enterprise zone program, enterprise zones and other distressed areas were compared in terms of the level of neighborhood revitalization between 1980 and 1990. The comparative analysis showed that the current enterprise zone program does not appear to have a substantial impact on neighborhood revitalization. / After examining the effectiveness of the enterprise zone program, quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to clarify the important factors which lead to a successful enterprise zone program. In these analyses, it is hypothesized that local economic development efforts play a determinant role in the revitalization of distressed communities. The statistical results of the quantitative analysis demonstrated that local governments' commitments are vital to the success of the enterprise zone program. / Case studies, as a qualitative research method, provided a more profound understanding as to the importance of local economic development efforts. The results of case studies showed that the active role of local government becomes worthwhile when the enterprise zone program is closely interconnected with a community redevelopment plan, with secured local financial resources, and is managed by an active local non-profit organization or public agency with extensive experiences in redevelopment activities. This implies that the combination of these local economic development efforts should be a premise for achieving neighborhood revitalization as a major goal of the enterprise zone program. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-11, Section: A, page: 4281. / Major Professor: Charles E. Connerly. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

This paper specifies a continuous time model of the probability of recidivism to provide evidence on the main hypothesis of the economics of crime that people weigh the costs and benefits of criminal activity in a rational utility maximizing process. Since the size of the illicit drug industry has proliferated dramatically in the recent past, drug-related offenders are used in the model. / The existence of a complete market for illicit drugs makes imperative the use of economic analyses. In order to characterize the probabilistic nature of recidivism, a formal search model is developed, which reflects the uncertainty and the risks associated with transactions in the illicit drug market. This model links economic incentives of market participants and their empirical behaviors. / A hazard model is estimated that analyzes the length of time in a given state (outside prison) prior to transition out of that state (re-incarceration). Among various hazard specifications, the Weibull hazard is adopted to shed some insights on the duration dependence with three categories of independent variables: opportunity cost, disincentives, and control variables. / The result shows that the opportunity cost perspective is fairly promising. The length of incarceration is not playing a significant role as a specific deterrent variable among drug offenders. Consequently, a long period of incarceration should apply, for an incapacitation purpose, only to those who are most likely to recidivate, i.e., those who have very low opportunity cost. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-03, Section: A, page: 0937. / Major Professor: David W. Rasmussen. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

In 1970, after two decades of disappointing results from development assistance programs, USAID initiated a new policy, the education sector analysis policy. Its objective was to provide the kinds of information necessary for formulating education policy recommendations and assistance programs tailored to the cultural, political, social, and economic realities facing individual countries. / In this study, the origin and evolution of USAID's education sector analysis policies and practices were traced from their inception in 1970 until the present, 1989. Also, a comparative analysis was made of the recommendations from four sector assessments conducted the late 1980s. Overall, this study showed: that USAID did not successfully implement its sector analysis policy, that the analytical methodologies actually implemented obfuscated national differences, and that assessments generated almost identical sets of policy recommendations for the education sector regardless of the country. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-12, Section: A, page: 3873. / Major Professor: Sydney R. Grant. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.

This dissertation is an attempt to determine the impact of the "War on Drugs" in the United States. The focus is on the opportunity costs of scarce drug enforcement resources, that are often not emphasized enough, resulting in forgone opportunities and the inefficient allocation of scarce criminal justice resources. Hypotheses concerning the causes and consequences of drug enforcement policy during 1984 and 1989 are developed using empirical models that are standard in the economics of crime literature. / The data set used in the empirical models consists of somewhat unique state level drug arrest information compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1984 to 1989. Law enforcement agencies routinely report data on crime to the Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Other crime information was obtained from this source. / The empirical analysis suggests that one possible opportunity cost of increasing drug enforcement is a tradeoff between drug arrests and the deterrence of property crime. Another indirect cost of drug enforcement in the United States is a rising violent crime rate that occurs due to changes in the spatial distribution of drug markets. The variations in state asset forfeiture laws appear to explain some of the differences in cross-state drug enforcement policies. Results indicate that drug enforcement policy has been influenced in those states which allow police to keep a portion of confiscated assets as it exerts an important impact on the allocation of police resources. "Bureaucratic self interest" is thus supported as a cause of the war on drugs. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-10, Section: A, page: 4054. / Major Professor: David W. Rasmussen. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

This study is an attempt to determine the impact of the "War on Drugs" in the State of Florida. The focus is on the possibility of a relationship between the increased police emphasis on the illicit drug market and the incidence of property crime. Hypotheses concerning the police's ability to prevent crime (deterrence), geographic spillovers of criminals, functional spillovers, and the budgetary impacts of the drug war are developed using a structural model familiar in the economics of crime literature. / The data set used in the empirical model consists of observations for each of the municipal police and sheriff departments in the State of Florida from 1984 to 1987. The data set is somewhat unique in that it is confined to a state where most exogenous institutional factors are similar. / The empirical analysis suggests: Police appear to be able to deter property crime at the margin; relative differences in police efforts (across jurisdictions) against both property crime and drug crime result in the geographic spillover of property crime; there appears to be a property crime--drug arrests tradeoff; police agency budgets are, in part, determined by the number of drug arrests they make. Overall, there is evidence of unintended consequences of the increased effort against drugs in Florida. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-03, Section: A, page: 1013. / Major Professor: Bruce L. Benson. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

Over the past fifty years Egypt has experienced a bewildering array of economic reforms. At the outbreak of the 1952 Revolution, Egypt had a relatively free market economy, but by the beginning of the 1960s the government had switched to economic planning and had almost full control over the economic infrastructure. However, the "socialist experiment" did not last very long. By the mid 1970s the market forces had taken a more significant role, reaching the peak of influence by the end of the decade and slowing in the 1980s. / To explain this change in economic policy, the Dependency school emphasizes the dominant role of external forces, and the Neo-classical school stresses the role of domestic forces. This study examined the arguments of both schools by investigating the relationship between change in economic policy on one side and trade flow, foreign aid, domestic economic performance, and elites' values on the other. Multiple regression technique was used to investigate this relationship. / The main conclusion of the study is that the values of the elites play a crucial role in determining the course of economic policy. The findings suggest that these values are an important intervening force between the country's economic orientation on one side and domestic economic performance, trade, and aid on the other. In other words, the impact of economic performance, trade, and aid on the country's economic policy is filtered through the values of the elites. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-03, Section: A, page: 1060. / Major Professor: Monte Palmer. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

The Rational Expectations Hypothesis (REH) restricts short- and long-horizon forecasts to be consistent with one another. Cross-variable consistency, also imposed by the REH, is the requirement that contemporaneously formed expectations of different variables be consistent with one another, as well as with the 'true model' jointly determining the realizations of those variables. After reviewing the literature on direct tests of the REH employing survey data as proxies for unobservable expectations, this dissertation (1) defines cross-variable consistency, (2) derives a Fisher-equation model of the nominal interest rate and (3) conducts cross-variable consistency tests for rationality of the ASA/NBER-SPF survey forecasts of macroeconomic variables using the derived model. Results strongly confirm the rationality of the median predictions and generally support the conclusion that individual forecasters form expectations in a manner consistent with the REH / acase@tulane.edu