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Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / It is necessary to improve on Africa poor and stagnated share of the global trade and to attract bigger share of the global investments funds to meet the growing developmental challenges. The bottlenecks at the borders of most countries have made Africa the continent with the highest cost of trade. This has worsened the competitiveness of the continent’s economy thereby imparting its ability to draw full benefits from the global trading system. The introduction of simpler trade procedures is expected to lower trade costs and boosts flows of goods among African countries and with the global community. It is imperative then to explore frameworks for innovative trade facilitating instruments within the ambits of the multilateral trading system to enhance intra-African trade. The idea is to evolve an Afrocentric framework that will not precipitate retaliatory measures from the trading partners. This study encourages African countries policy makers to avail themselves of the concessionary provisions in the WTO agreement to design a targeted trade facilitation framework. It is posited that an Afrocentric trade facilitation legal and regulatory policies are necessary to improve African countries capabilities to trade more with each other and with other countries at similar stage of development. This must be structured to specifically facilitate intra-Africa trade via the development of regional or sectoral competitive advantages rather than the multilateral trade facilitation protocols that is targeted to boost African trade with the international partners. A mega-regional trade agreement that will facilitate intra-African trade in the specific sectors and then use the bigger economies of scale to develop competitiveness on the global stage, is proposed. Based on the continent abundant agricultural and natural resources, and the huge and growing young populations, it is found that investments in value creating manufacturing industries in the agricultural, power and the transport sectors as well as the service sectors were found to hold the biggest potentials. This is necessary to generate large jobs and employment opportunities and diversify exports. In these sectors, region-owned companies in each sub-region to be complemented with private investors are being proposed. This is necessary due to the huge resources outlay and the poor margin that will not encourage private investors to commit into this sector. To protect the companies being proposed without precipitating retaliatory actions by the trading partners, Article XXIV, the Enabling Clause and the contingent trade protection measures as contained in Article XIX of the GATT Agreement (the safeguard measures and the subsidies and countervailing measures) were presented to be sufficient.

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Στην παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία γίνεται σύνδεση του διεθνούς εμπορίου με την τεχνολογική διάχυση ως σημαντικού παράγοντα. Επιπλέον, γίνεται αναφορά στα μοντέλα διάχυσης τεχνολογίας. Το θέμα αυτό παρουσιάζει ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον σήμερα, καθώς λόγω της δύσκολης διεθνούς οικονομικής συγκυρίας, ο όγκος των συναλλαγών έχει υποστεί σημαντική πτώση παγκοσμίως. Η εργασία ξεκινάει με μια αναφορά στο παγκόσμιο εμπόριο και την περιγραφή του. Περνάει στην εικόνα που έχει σήμερα και στις αλλαγές που έχουν διαδραματιστεί και οδήγησαν σε αυτήν. Εξετάζεται η διασπορά των πρωταγωνιστών υψηλής τεχνολογίας και πώς οι χώρες που ακολουθούσαν έγιναν πρωταγωνιστές (βλέπε Κίνα, κ.α.). Τέλος γίνεται μια αναφορά σε δύο είδη του διεθνούς εμπορίου. Στη συνέχεια μελετάται η Τεχνολογική διάχυση και αναλύεται σαν ένας βασικός παράγοντας ο οποίος οδήγησε στις εξελίξεις του διεθνούς εμπορίου που εξετάστηκαν νωρίτερα. Ξεκινώντας από τη διάχυση γνώσης, ακολουθεί ο ορισμός της τεχνολογικής διάχυσης και εξετάζονται τα κανάλια μέσα από τα οποία διαχέεται αυτή. Τέλος διερευνάται η μεθοδολογία μέτρησης της διάχυσης μέσα από μερικές εμπειρικές μελέτες. / The present thesis correlates global trade with the diffusion of technology as an important factor. In addition, reference is made to models of technology diffusion. This issue is of great interest in this day and age since the volume of exchange has decreased significantly on a global level due to the difficult financial circumstances internationally. The work begins with a reference to global trade and a description of this. It moves on to illustrate its present form and the changes which have taken place, and led it to what it is. The dispersion of high technology protagonists is also examined, as well as how the countries which followed became protagonists (see China and others). Finally, a reference is made to two types of global trade. Next, the diffusion of technology is examined and analysed as a basic factor which has led to the development of global trade as analysed earlier. Starting with the dissemination of knowledge, a definition of technology diffusion follows, and the channels through which this is dispersed are examined. Finally, the methodology of measuring technology diffusion is investigated through some empirical studies.

Alle Menschen haben elementare Gemeinsamkeiten: Um zu überleben, müssen sie atmen, trinken – und essen. Doch ist Ernährung garantiert? Der Diskurs über globale Ernährungssicherung führte Jahrzehnte lang ein Schattendasein. Nun erfährt die Agrarwirtschaft eine Renaissance, doch ob dies den Hungernden zugutekommen wird, ist fraglich: Immer mehr Produkte sollen nicht den Energiebedarf der Menschen, sondern den der Maschinen decken. In unserem aktuellen Thema diskutieren Experten die Möglichkeiten und Risiken dieser veränderten Wertschätzung der Landwirtschaft.

The subject of this thesis is the politics of economic restructuring, euphemistically termed 'reform' in the Pacific. Although structural adjustment policies are essentially neoliberal economic policies, the project of global economic restructuring, and its supposed end, a global regime of free trade, is a political one in several respects. It involves the wielding of economic power over developing countries by powerful multilateral institutions, developed countries and private corporate entities to such a degree that it is considered by some to represent the disciplining/subjugating and dis-empowering of developing states. It is supported by a successfully propagated ideology that combines economic growth theories (held to be infallible), 'good governance' rhetoric (with which no-one can reasonably disagree), and new notions of equality and 'non-discrimination' - the 'level playing field' and 'national treatment, in WTO parlance (which have been enshrined in enforceable global trade rules). It entails redefining the role of the state, transferring public ownership of assets to private hands, and removing subsidies that protect domestic industries and jobs, all of which are strongly contested. Successfully implementing 'reform' is widely acknowledged to require not only 'reform champions' but also 'ownership', and thus broad acceptance and legitimacy, yet commitments to restructuring are often made by government ministers without reference at all to national parliaments. National economic summits are used to rubber stamp or legitimate policies in a fait accompli. The thesis begins by situating the global regime of structural adjustment within the political context of North-South relations in the 1970s, the debt crisis of the early 1980s, and the collapse of socialist regimes and consequent discrediting of the socialist economic model and other variants of state-led development. It shows the key role of the World Bank in advocating the neoliberal model and setting the development aid agenda, and its abdication of this lead role after 1995 in favour of the World Trade Organisation and its agenda of global trade liberalisation. The thesis then examines the origins, agents and interests behind structural reform in the island states of the Pacific before focusing on how a regional approach to achieving regional wide economic restructuring and trade liberalisation is being taken, using a regional political organisation of Pacific Island states (The Pacific Islands Forum), and regional free trade agreements. It then illustrates the path of economic restructuring embarked on by Fiji following the 1987 coups, examines the implementation of 'economic reform' concurrently with policies to advance the interests of indigenous Fijians, and discusses some of the less acknowledged dimensions of reform.

Trade of South Africa with the rest of the world has changed substantially since the mid-1990s. The United States (US), which used to be the main trading partner of South Africa, is now only the third largest trading partner of the country. South African trade with Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom (UK) are also lower. The key reason is the emergence of China in the world economy. South Africa did not trade with China before 1993, but from 2009 China became the main trading partner of the country. Globalisation and China’s emergence have influenced the trade linkages of many other countries in the world. To incorporate the changes in global trade linkages, the foreign variables of all the models in the study are compiled with trade-weighted three-year moving average data. The foremost objective of the thesis is to determine how the changes in trade linkages affect the transmission of economic shocks originating in the rest of the world on South Africa. The global vector autoregression (GVAR) approach is used since one of its advantages is the incorporation of global trade linkages, which facilitates the analysis of the transmission of shocks from one country to another. As a GVAR model combines many individual country models, the study first estimates such a country-specific model for South Africa to determine whether it displays the expected impact of domestic shocks on the economy. This type of model is known as a vector error correction model (VECM) with domestic variables and weakly exogenous (X) foreign (*) variables, denoted by VECX*. The results from the VECX* for South Africa are in line with expectations, showing the effective transmission of monetary policy. The study then examines the impact of international shocks on the South African economy with a GVAR model. The GVAR, which incorporates country-specific VECX* models for 33 countries, is solved for all 33 countries using global trade weight matrices at different dates. The results indicate that over time South Africa is much more vulnerable to GDP shocks to the Chinese economy, and less vulnerable to GDP shocks to the US economy. These trends are however not confined to South Africa, and as such highlights the increased risk to the South African economy and many other economies, should China experience slower GDP growth. Finally, the thesis determines whether the forecasting performance of GVAR models is superior to that of a country-specific VECX* model. The study compares the out-of-sample forecasts of two key South African variables (real GDP and inflation) for five types of models: a VECX*, a customised small GVAR for South Africa, the more general 33-country GVAR, simple autoregressive models and random walk models. Better forecasts of both the GVAR models compared to the VECX* model at forecast horizons of more than four quarters show that, despite the complicated nature of the GVAR model with the inclusion of many countries and global trade linkages, the additional information is useful for forecasting domestic variables / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Economics / unrestricted

no / A deconstruction of the role of peace support operations suggests that they sustain a particular order of world politics that privileges the rich and powerful states in their efforts to control or isolate unruly parts of the world. As a management device it has grown in significance as the strategic imperatives of the post-industrialized, capitalist world have neutered the universal pretensions of the United Nations. Drawing on the work of Robert Cox and Mark Duffield, this essay adopts a critical theory perspective to argue that peace support operations serve a narrow, problem-solving purpose - to doctor the dysfunctions of the global political economy within a framework of liberal imperialism. Two dynamics in world politics might be exploited to mobilize a counter-hegemonic transformation in global governance. First, a radical change in the global trade system and its problematic institutions will create opportunities to emancipate the weak from economic hegemony. Second, future network wars are likely to require increasingly subtle and flexible teams, similar to disaster relief experts, to supply preventive action, economic aid and civilian protection. This might only be achieved by releasing peace support operations from the state-centric control system, and making them answerable to more transparent, more democratic and accountable multinational institutions.

In a contemporary with intense concerns towards global warming, this thesis has investigated the matter of how trade regulation policies, responding to climate change, are rhetorically motivated and discussed within international forums. Particularly by looking at the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and by critically dissecting how the EU has been navigating its conflicting position; on one hand, as the self-appointed leader of progressive climate actions, on the other hand, as the guardian of the common economic interests of the Union – and on a third stand, as a prominent member of the World Trade Organization, with binding obligations to not violate its rules.  On the basis of a theoretically post-colonial perspective, this paper has explored the power-relational tensions operating within discussions, practically by investigating the narrating presence of post-colonial tendencies. The study has additionally been interested in contributing to wider discussions on ideas and processes influencing the evolvement of international trade regulations on climate, and similarly, to constructively nuance the leadership role shouldered by the EU. This has been completed through an operationalization of three theoretical concepts; Universalism, Otherness/Self and Hegemony - and by implementing a mixed-method approach, bringing forward both qualitative and quantitative results answering up to the question on how the EU’s motivation in favour of the CBAM has been carried out rhetorically – both within internal discussions and during official WTO meetings.  Based on two data-cases reflecting the nature of EU’s rhetoric within the two forums, and in relation to the three theoretical concepts - intentionally developed to detect different post-colonial features - this study resulted in interesting outcomes demonstrating distinct rhetorical patterns. While in WTO contexts, emphases were put on asserting the EU as the natural leader and the CBAM as the most ambitious and effective environmental tool – internal discussions revealed contrastingly higher emphases on motivating the CBAM in terms of being a convenient regulation, serving the climate objective - most importantly - without interfering, nor jeopardizing the sovereignty of EU’s economic position. In fact, comparing between the two data-cases, the frequency of code-words motivating economic interests were 178% higher in internal EU discussions. It has therefore been verified that EU’s internal discussions on how to tackle global warming are strongly interlinked with reasonings around economic matters of interests. On the contrary, this is exceedingly toned down during official WTO-meetings.