The major objectives of this study were to examine electrical conduction properties of BaTiO3-based multilayer ceramic ( MLC ) capacitors in order to gain a better understanding of the conduction transport mechanisms inside the devices. The experiments involved mainly leakage current versus time measurements under both low temperature-low voltage stress and high temperature-high voltage stress. It was established that leakage current conduction in a MLC capacitor under temperature-voltage stress can be divided into three different conduction regions due to different mechanisms. Those regions are polarization current, DC conduction current and degradation current. The polarization current decreases with time as a power law relation, i.e. Ic(t) t-m where the exponent value m is strongly dependent on the type of capacitor and temperature, but is only weakly dependent on the applied voltage. It has been proposed that two degradation models ( a charge carrier concentration model and a reduction of grain boundary barrier height model ) can explain the degradation behavior for the Z5U devices tested. Degradation measurements indicate that the lifetime for Z5U capacitors can be described by Minford's expression. However, these models account only partly for X7R degradation. X7R behavior, is characterized by an early power law time dependence, followed by exponential voltage dependence. The most probable conduction transport mechanism in X7R capacitors is small polaron hopping, while grain boundary transmission may be the predominant conduction transport mechanism in Z5U capacitors. / Master of Science