Thesis (M.A.)--United States International University, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-116).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 119-126).

The 1988 Canada - United States Free Trade Agreement and GATT decision radically altered the trading regime between the two countries. Historically wellinsulated from a competitive environment, there was concern that the British Columbia wine industry would not be able to compete under the new trading rules outlined within the Free Trade Agreement and resulting from the GATT decision that once imported, all products were to be afforded national treatment. This study was undertaken to determine whether or not the industry is better off under the Free Trade Agreement with respect to profits and the ability to compete head on with imports. A benchmark situation covering producer organization/market structure, prices, production and profitability portrays an industry prior to the Free Trade Agreement that is profitable, however, the profitability appears to be based on the fact that the B.C. government was protecting the industry against foreign wine producers. Section 4.0 of the study outlines the trade related factors; policy and procedural changes. Details of industry policy, the FTA, GATT ruling, and interprovincial barriers are discussed with a graphical analysis of the impact of B.C.'s domestic policies on the international market. Section 5.0 studies the industry changes as a result of Section 4.0. Changes in pricing, production (domestic and imported), industry sales and revenue, profitability and marketing strategies lead to the conclusions presented in Section 6.0. The conclusions of the analysis support the hypothesis that the B.C. wine industry is at least as profitable as it was prior to the policy changes and its growth suggests that the most profitable segments of the industry are the premium estate and farm winery segments.

The creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by the year 2005 has been a serious undertaking in the hemisphere since the first Summit of the Americas held in Miami in December of 1994. This entails the creation of a free trade agreement that would include virtually all the nations of the Western Hemisphere. However, this is not the first attempt at the creation of trade agreements within the region. From early efforts such as the Latin American Free Trade Agreement to current ones such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the MERCOSUR, there has been a push for the past 40 years at the use of free trade as a tool for economic development. Nevertheless, traditionally there has been a lack of legal and institutional analysis in the formation of these trading blocs. The same thing appears to be happening in the formation of the FTAA. This thesis analyzes and compares the differing trading blocs in the Western Hemisphere in terms of institutions and capacity to create regional norms and proposes the institutional framework needed for successful regional integration for the FTAA. It then looks at legal obstacles within the Constitutions of select States to the formation of this framework and problems that may arise in jurisdictional uncertainties between the plethora of trading blocs.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Johns Hopkins University, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 341-358).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-146).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 523-542).

The 1988 Canada - United States Free Trade Agreement and GATT decision radically altered the trading regime between the two countries. Historically wellinsulated from a competitive environment, there was concern that the British Columbia wine industry would not be able to compete under the new trading rules outlined within the Free Trade Agreement and resulting from the GATT decision that once imported, all products were to be afforded national treatment. This study was undertaken to determine whether or not the industry is better off under the Free Trade Agreement with respect to profits and the ability to compete head on with imports. A benchmark situation covering producer organization/market structure, prices, production and profitability portrays an industry prior to the Free Trade Agreement that is profitable, however, the profitability appears to be based on the fact that the B.C. government was protecting the industry against foreign wine producers. Section 4.0 of the study outlines the trade related factors; policy and procedural changes. Details of industry policy, the FTA, GATT ruling, and interprovincial barriers are discussed with a graphical analysis of the impact of B.C.'s domestic policies on the international market. Section 5.0 studies the industry changes as a result of Section 4.0. Changes in pricing, production (domestic and imported), industry sales and revenue, profitability and marketing strategies lead to the conclusions presented in Section 6.0. The conclusions of the analysis support the hypothesis that the B.C. wine industry is at least as profitable as it was prior to the policy changes and its growth suggests that the most profitable segments of the industry are the premium estate and farm winery segments. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

No description available.

Applying market arbitrage theory on daily data, we measure the empirical financial market convergence of NAFTA’s financial markets since 1994. Radar diagram and wavelet multi-resolution analysis (MRA) scalogram movies of the statistical moments of the term interest rate differentials visualize the multidimensional convergence. From the radar movies, we find: 1) a uniform disappearance of the average forward premia; 2) a non-uniform decline of bilateral financial market risk; 3) variation of bilateral financial market pressure measured by skewness; and 4) emergence of uniform market microstructures as measured by vanishing excess-kurtosis. From the MRA movies, we find that the national term structures of interest rates converge, since the stochastic resonance coefficients of the interest rate differentials lose significance: market energy at all frequencies dissipates into “white noise.” Testing Obrimah, Prakash and Rangan’s (2009) Lemma, we find that, after 2002, higher financial flow pressure is a necessary condition for lower financial market risk. / vii, 67 leaves ; 29 cm