Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O aumento do comércio intra-regional é um dos objetivos da União das Nações Sul-Americanas (UNASUL). O crescimento do comércio pressupõe, entretanto uma infra-estrutura adequada na região. O objetivo da presente dissertação de mestrado é o de avaliar os efeitos do estoque de infra-estrutura nos fluxos de comércio dos dez principais países da América do Sul. O modelo gravitacional foi escolhido como metodologia empírica, sendo testada uma especificação. Os resultados confirmam a hipóteses da importância da infra-estrutura para o aumento do comércio intra-regional. Logo, o projeto IIRSA (Iniciativa para a Integração da Infra-Estrutura Regional Sul-Americana) é um instrumento importante para a integração sul-americana. / The growth of intra-regional trade is one of the aims of UNASUL (South American United Nations). Nevertheless, the increase of the trade between the South America countries depends upon a good infrastructure of the region. The aim of this dissertation is to evaluate the effects of the infrastructure stock upon the trade flows of the ten main South American countries. The gravity model has been chosen to evaluate issue. One specification of the model have been applied. The results confirm the hypothesis about the relevance of the infrastructure for the increase is an important vehicle for the South American integration.

In this study we examine how bilateral trade flows are affected by regime type. Previous research with the aim to investigate the effect of regime type on bilateral trade has primarily used a binary definition of democracy, and findings have indicated that democracies trade more extensively with other democracies. In this thesis, we add to the existing literature by disaggregating regime types, defining liberal democracies, electoral democracies and authoritarian regimes, and adopt the well-proven methodology of the gravity model of trade in OLS regressions. We use trade data adopted from IMF in the years 2004 and 2014 covering 162 countries. Data on the main explanatory variable, regime type, is defined in accordance with democracy indicator Freedom House’s methodology. Results show that pairs consisting of two liberal democracies have the highest values of trade flows, compared to other combinations of trading regime type-pairs. However, due to methodological discrepancies and ambiguous estimates, the relationship between regime type and trade flows remains uncertain.

This thesis aims to analyse the effects of the Central America Free Trade Agreement on trade using the gravity model. The principal actors of interest are the United States of America and Central American countries combined with Dominican Republic as the other regional actor. Panel data was used with 153 countries for the period of 1995-2015. The model was specified using the dummy approach and estimated with OLS and PPML estimators to obtain results on effects of trade policy variables on exports. Estimates show mixed results but the general effect of CAFTA on exports is positive and significant. This trade creation effect makes CAFTA an important trade agreement for economic relations between member countries.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O aumento do comércio intra-regional é um dos objetivos da União das Nações Sul-Americanas (UNASUL). O crescimento do comércio pressupõe, entretanto uma infra-estrutura adequada na região. O objetivo da presente dissertação de mestrado é o de avaliar os efeitos do estoque de infra-estrutura nos fluxos de comércio dos dez principais países da América do Sul. O modelo gravitacional foi escolhido como metodologia empírica, sendo testada uma especificação. Os resultados confirmam a hipóteses da importância da infra-estrutura para o aumento do comércio intra-regional. Logo, o projeto IIRSA (Iniciativa para a Integração da Infra-Estrutura Regional Sul-Americana) é um instrumento importante para a integração sul-americana. / The growth of intra-regional trade is one of the aims of UNASUL (South American United Nations). Nevertheless, the increase of the trade between the South America countries depends upon a good infrastructure of the region. The aim of this dissertation is to evaluate the effects of the infrastructure stock upon the trade flows of the ten main South American countries. The gravity model has been chosen to evaluate issue. One specification of the model have been applied. The results confirm the hypothesis about the relevance of the infrastructure for the increase is an important vehicle for the South American integration.

The thesis tries to investigate which impact the new Silk Road announced 2013 by the Chinese president has on EU-China trade potentials. The so called OBOR initiative is an infrastructure project that aims to promote trade facilitation along the ancient Silk Road. The initiative includes more than 60 countries. The gravity model of trade will be applied to run a simulation exercise to estimate trade potentials from the EU to China and vice versa. The results suggest that China can increase its trade potential to the EU. Among the EU countries there are winners and losers. Those countries which participate in the initiative will benefit from an increased trade potential others will lose trade potential.

South-East Asian region is the most dynamic region in the world. It is also known for having enormous number of RTAs, which became the main drive force for trade integration. Moreover, China is the leader in this region, changing fast and becoming either a pioneer or a threat for the neighbor countries. This paper uses a gravity model to estimate the influence of RTAs on the countries in the region and attempts to find out whether new agreements will deeper the trade cooperation or make the 'spaghetti bowl' effect even worse.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between China's investment in Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) and China-CEECs trade. Since the 1950s, the research on the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign trade has become one of the topics of theoretical and empirical analysis. Many scholars have conducted extensive studies on the relationship between FDI and trade from different perspectives and theoretical and empirical perspectives. Under the background of "the Belt and Road", the CEECs, as important trading partners in this strategy, have gradually expanded their trade with China. This paper explores the current situation and characteristics of China's direct investment and trade with the CEECs from the perspective of the relationship between FDI and foreign trade. The development of China's direct investment and trade with the CEECs is explored from the perspectives of total volume, country, and products by qualitative analysis. Meanwhile, the trade gravity model is established to empirically analyze the influence of China's direct investment in the CEECs on China-CEECs trade scale from the three aspects of total trade volume, export, and import. The results show that China's direct investment in the CEECs has a long-term positive effect on the scale of...

Having the ability to predict enrollment is an important task for any school's recruiting team. The purpose of this study was to identify significant factors that can be used to predict the spatial distribution of enrollments. As a case study, we used East Tennessee State University (ETSU) pharmacy school, a regional pharmacy school located in the Appalachian Mountains. Through the application of a negative binomial regression model, we found that the most important indicators of enrollment volume for the ETSU pharmacy school were Euclidean distance, probability (based on competing pharmacy schools' prestige, driving distance between schools and home and tuition costs), and the natural barrier of the Appalachian Mountains. Using these factors, together with other control variables, we successfully predicted the spatial distribution of enrollments for ETSU pharmacy school. Interestingly, gender also surfaced as a variable for predicting the pharmacy school's enrollment. We found female students are more sensitive to the geographic proximity of home to school.

Tea is China's traditional export-earning agricultural product. For a long time, China's tea exports have occupied an extremely important position in the international market. With the further opening of the international agricultural product market and the increasingly fierce competition in the international tea market, China's tea exports are increasingly being affected by technical barriers.The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze which factors are affecting Chinese green tea exports. In addition, there is a focus on the trade status of Chinese green tea in the EU market, Japan and the United States. To achieve this objective, this paper adopts a modern approach to gravity models, i.e. an approach which uses specifications based on micro-foundations. Specifically, The paper uses a specification which explicitly takes into account the nature of multilateral trade resistance (MTR). More specifically, estimators based on traditional panel methods (combined with the recommended structures of dummies) and Silva-Tenreyro's (2006) PPML estimator (also combined with dummies). The results show that the maximum residue limits(MRL) of pesticides in importing countries have significantly impacted the export of Chinese tea. The cultural effects such as the Language similarity have a positive...

This study examines the determinants of internal migration in Spain. It pays close attention to a key variable that has been little studied so far, taxes. That is, we analyze whether the difference in taxes between the autonomous communities of Spain is a determining factor for Spanish citizens when deciding to move. In addition to taxes, other determinants such as GDP, geographical distance between regions, unemployment and amenities are also analysed. The study is based on the theory of Gravity model and Pooled OLS and fixed effects specifications are used. The findings reveal that the tax effort has a positive effect on migration, but its magnitude is small.