Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / My dissertation consists of three papers on international finance, international economics, and labor economics. The first paper develops a stochastic general equilibrium model to understand the effects of default risk on output, consumption, investment, and current account deficits in emerging markets. The second paper studies how market structure affects exchange-rate pass-through. This analysis is empirical as well as theoretical, using a partial equilibrium model. The third paper develops a model to study relative wages across different educational levels in developed countries. The model in my first paper features endogenous default risk. Its calibration results explain a number of important stylized facts about emerging economies, including the negative correlation between investment and net exports, the procyclicality of investment, and the potential for current account reversals. The second paper compares exchange-rate pass-through under perfect competition and oligopoly, showing that the two different market structures have opposite effects on this currency pricing behavior. The paper's empirical test, whether implemented on the basis of a partial equilibrium framework or on the model's general equilibrium framework, finds support for perfect competition. The third paper uses differences within and across industries m education wage premiums to study factors affecting those premiums. The paper begins by showing that within-industry as opposed to cross-industry educational wage premiums explain most of developed country differences in wages by education. It then develops a theoretical model and an empirical testing strategy, using U.S. and Japanese data, to examine whether the use of IT capital and the decision to outsource affect the education-wage premium. The answer is mixed depending on the country in question.

Why do states create new judicial tools that severely limit or altogether undermine their sovereignty? Why do some states choose, moreover, to become leading innovators, adopting these new types of enforcement mechanisms significantly earlier than their peers? This dissertation focuses on the creation of investor-state arbitration provisions in Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) and the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC), especially its independent prosecutor provision. For all their differences, investor-state arbitration provisions and the ICC share three institutional features that, in combination, pose unprecedented constraints on state sovereignty: they are judicial, they entail compulsory jurisdiction, and they grant non-state actors - private investors or an independent prosecutor - the authority to initiate legal proceedings against states and state officials. The introduction of transnational and supranational judicial mechanisms is a strategy of the strong, not the weak. Contingent on the mobilization of transnational advocacy networks, powerful states turn to sovereignty-constraining tools in response to two core features: an international legal crisis and a relatively empty international judicial landscape. In the aftermath of legal crisis, the creation of sovereignty-constraining tools helps powerful states both to increase the efficacy of legal rules that have been challenged and to validate the authority of legal rules that have been undermined. This argument is counter-intuitive: powerful states turn to costly new judicial mechanisms not to transform but to protect the status quo. To advance this claim I examine both failed and successful attempts at creating novel judicial mechanisms in investment and international criminal law across the twentieth century. I use qualitative and historical analysis at the global level and statistical cross-national analysis at the state level. In the case of BITs, developing countries in the 1970s expropriated foreign property on a large scale and challenged traditional investment rules in the United Nations, thus triggering a crisis for the investment regime. In response, powerful states turned to investor-state arbitration provisions, not simply the BITs themselves, as a strategy to protect the existing regime. In the case of the ICC, Nazi Germany's territorial aggression and the 1990s mass atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda prompted legal crises for the territorial integrity principle and the human rights regime respectively. Seeking to bolster territoriality and human rights, powerful states experimented with the establishment of a criminal court. They failed in the 1950s and succeeded in the 1990s. Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs) were of critical importance. Their interactions with states were reciprocal and strategic. TANs invented and promoted the two forms of judicial mechanisms at the global level, thus influencing state receptivity; they also molded their strategies and substantive goals to suit state preferences A discussion of the effects that crisis and transnational advocates have on the creation of investor-state arbitration provisions and the ICC yields new insights into existing scholarship on transnationalism, credible commitment, legalism, and rational design. This analysis, moreover, has broad implications for our understanding of the forces that can lead to profound political and legal change.

Le marché du travail est une institution centrale dans toute économie moderne. En même temps, le marché du travail est caractérisé par une réglementation omniprésente. Une littérature récente et croissante étudie les conséquences d'une telle hétérogénéité dans les institutions du marché du travail. Jusqu'à présent, cependant, peu de travaux ont abordé les implications des rigidités du marché du travail pour la dynamique du travail induite par le commerce en se concentrant sur le secteur informel, ou les chocs de second moment dans un contexte d'économie ouverte. Le but de cette thèse est de répondre à ces questions.Le premier chapitre étudie l'impact des chocs d'incertitude dans une petite économie ouverte avec des frictions de recherche et d'appariement et l'entrée d'entreprises. Nous développons d'abord notre analyse empirique dans le contexte de l'économie coréenne, car toutes les dimensions du modèle sont pertinentes dans ce pays. Une augmentation de l'incertitude réduit la production, la consommation, l'investissement et le taux de recherche d'emploi, tout en augmentant le chômage et les séparations d'emploi. Nous complétons également les données empiriques existantes en examinant la dynamique des entreprises, le taux de change réel et le comportement du compte courant. Dans notre cadre théorique, nous illustrons de nouveaux mécanismes de transmission qui sont ignorés dans la littérature. Les mécanismes économiques vont au-delà de la simple addition de chaque caractéristique. Les frictions de recherche, l'entrée des entreprises et la dimension de l'économie ouverte interagissent fortement pour amplifier les effets des chocs d'incertitude et rendre le modèle cohérent avec les données empiriques.Le deuxième chapitre étudie comment les réformes fiscales contribuent à assurer une mondialisation équitable. Dans cet article, nous développons un modèle à deux zones: un pays développé et un pays émergent. Les deux domaines diffèrent selon la taille du secteur informel, caractérisé par un marché du travail plus flexible et une productivité plus faible. Notre analyse suggère que la libéralisation du commerce stimule l'activité économique et l'emploi dans les secteurs formel et informel. Cependant, cette expansion de l'emploi est biaisée vers le secteur informel, qui n'est pas soumis à la réglementation du travail et donc plus flexible. Par conséquent, la libéralisation du commerce entraîne une baisse de la qualité de l'emploi, car les travailleurs informels ne sont pas couverts par la législation du travail, la sécurité sociale et reçoivent des salaires moins élevés. Une réforme fiscale neutre en termes de budget, qui ferait passer le fardeau fiscal des taxes sur les salaires versées par les entreprises opérant dans le secteur formel à une taxe à la consommation, pourrait représenter une stratégie pour soutenir le secteur formel. Cependant, la formalisation se fait au prix d'une inégalité croissante des revenus entre travailleurs formels et informels.Le troisième chapitre évalue l'importance des institutions du marché du travail dans la transmission des chocs d'incertitude aux marchés du travail. En utilisant des VAR spécifiques aux pays dans les pays de l'OCDE, je constate qu'il y a une hétérogénéité considérable entre les réponses des taux de chômage aux chocs d'incertitude. Je fournis également des preuves que cette hétérogénéité peut être attribuée à la législation différentielle sur la protection de l'emploi (EPL). Les pays à faible niveau d'EPL subissent des augmentations de chômage plus graves que les pays à EPL élevé à la suite de chocs d'incertitude. EPL plus stricte neutralise la réaction du chômage, rendant plus coûteux le licenciement des travailleurs. De plus, le choc du second moment renforce ce mécanisme à travers le canal des options réelles. Sous l'irréversibilité et l'incertitude, les coûts de tir viennent avec un coût plus élevé. / The labor market is a central institution in any modern economy. At the same time, the labor market is characterized by pervasive regulation. Across nations, the labor market is subject to minimum wages, hiring and firing restrictions, compulsory collective bargaining, etc. A recent and growing literature investigates the consequences of such heterogeneity in labor market institutions, studying how labor market rigidities affect the causes and consequences of policy changes. Thus far, however, few works have addressed the implications of labor market rigidities for trade-induced labor dynamics focusing on the informal sector, or the second moment shocks in an open economy setting. Important questions remain open for researchers and policymakers. The purpose of this thesis is to address these questions, studying the role of labor market frictions and its interaction with international trade and uncertainty.The first chapter investigates the impact of uncertainty shocks in a small open economy with search and matching frictions and firm entry. We first develop our empirical analysis in the context of the Korean economy, as all dimensions of the model are relevant in this country. An increase in uncertainty lowers output, consumption, investment and job finding rate, while raising unemployment and job separations. We also supplement the existing empirical evidence by looking at firm dynamics, real exchange rate and current account behavior. In our theoretical framework, we illustrate new transmissions mechanism that are ignored in the literature. Economic mechanisms go beyond the simple addition of each feature. Search frictions, firm entry and the open economy dimension actually strongly interact to amplify the effects of uncertainty shocks and make the model consistent with the empirical evidence.The second chapter studies how tax reforms help ensure a fair globalization. In this paper we develop a two-area model: a developed and an emerging country. The two areas differ according to the size of the informal sector, which is characterized by a more flexible labor market and lower productivity. Our analysis suggests that trade liberalization boosts economic activity and employment in both the formal and informal sector. However, this employment expansion is biased toward the informal sector, which is not subject to labor regulation and hence more flexible. Hence, trade liberalization leads to lower employment quality, as informal workers are not covered by the labor legislation, social security and receive lower paid. A budget-neutral tax reform switching the tax burden from payroll taxes paid by firms operating in the formal sector to a consumption tax may represent a strategy to support the formal sector. However, formalization comes at the cost of widening income inequality between formal and informal workers.The third chapter assesses the importance of labor market institutions in the transmission of uncertainty shocks to labor markets. Using country-specific VARs across OECD countries, I find that there is substantial cross-country heterogeneity in the responses of unemployment rates to uncertainty shocks. I also provide evidence that this heterogeneity can be attributed to differential employment protection legislation (EPL). Low EPL countries suffer more severe rises in unemployment compared to high EPL countries following uncertainty shocks. Stricter EPL mutes the reaction of unemployment, making it more costly to lay workers off. Moreover, the second moment shock reinforces this mechanism through the real options channel. Under irreversibility and uncertainty, firing costs come with a bigger cost. On the other hand, the role of other labor market characteristics is ambiguous.

Abstract The International Baccalaureate in Australia and Canada: 1980 - 1993 This dissertation is a study of the International Baccalaureate(IB) in the education systems of Canada and Australia. The IB has been described as a world movement. The number of global institutions and social movements are increasing greatly in the 1990s. The thesis looks at the historical development of the IB, recent developments of the IB in Canada and Australia and develops the claim that the IB has become a provider of global cultural capital. The theoretical paradigm adopted is that of Pierre Bourdieu. Conclusions of the study are: 1 in Australia and Canada the IB is as important for the 'symbolic imposition' it bestows on holders of the IB as it is for the stated intentions of educating the whole person. 2 the IB functions as an agent of 'reproduction' rather than as an international laboratory for experiment both in curriculum and examining methods as originally intended by the founders of the IB. 3 students participating in the IB increase their potential for advantage in the 'global field'.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed on Feb. 5, 2007). PDF text: 197 p. : ill. UMI publication number: AAT 3216431. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche format.

Thesis (D.C.L.). / Written for the Faculty of Law. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2009/11/05). Includes bibliographical references.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of Government and Public Administration

No description available.

Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2005.

Abstract The International Baccalaureate in Australia and Canada: 1980 - 1993 This dissertation is a study of the International Baccalaureate(IB) in the education systems of Canada and Australia. The IB has been described as a world movement. The number of global institutions and social movements are increasing greatly in the 1990s. The thesis looks at the historical development of the IB, recent developments of the IB in Canada and Australia and develops the claim that the IB has become a provider of global cultural capital. The theoretical paradigm adopted is that of Pierre Bourdieu. Conclusions of the study are: 1 in Australia and Canada the IB is as important for the 'symbolic imposition' it bestows on holders of the IB as it is for the stated intentions of educating the whole person. 2 the IB functions as an agent of 'reproduction' rather than as an international laboratory for experiment both in curriculum and examining methods as originally intended by the founders of the IB. 3 students participating in the IB increase their potential for advantage in the 'global field'.