The Iranian economy has over 30-years been under several of US sanctions due to differences in their political objectives, affecting primarily their economic lifeblood, the oil business. Therefore during this period the Iranian economy has experienced setbacks in their development of national prosperity. This paper investigates the effect of the economic sanctions, during the time period 1975-2006, on Iran’s trade flows by incorporating the gravity model. Also, including geographical proximity and cultural ties further extends the model, which has been shown to strongly influence trade. The findings suggest that sanctions have negative impact on trade flows and are consistent with previous findings. Further estimation methods such as the Heckman- and PPML method are applied accounting for zero trade flows. The empirical  results indicate that sanctions have had a large negative effect on trade flows as expected. When further dividing the sanctions into five different time periods the results conclude the previous ones, however the five time periods have been influenced by sanctions in different varieties. Hence sanctions hamper trade and prevent the Iranian economy to thrive to its fullest potential.

This thesis is an assessment of the dynamics of trade affinities and how they have influenced trade flows in the European continent. The focus is how trade affinities have altered over a time span of four time periods stretching from the 1970s up to today and how these alterations have influenced globalization. A total of 41 countries belonging to the European continent have been selected. Furthermore four variables were selected to represent trade affinities; distance, border, colony, and language. These have been selected as they are generally believed to be static and thus should not change over time. Also, this thesis aims to show the separate influence of each trade affinity as other papers usually estimate trade affinities as one collective variable. By the use of a gravity model 9 variables are tested in order to determine their influence on trade flows. This is done through a regression with a log-log equation where the dependent variable is Export and the affinity variables are estimated as dummy variables. The regression is divided into four time periods in order to more easily determine how the trade affinity variables have altered in influence on trade flows in Europe. The first time period represent an average of the time period 1974-1976, the second 1984-1986, the third 1994-1996 and the fourth 2004-2006. The regression results illustrate that the majority of the selected variables are significant but most importantly that the trade affinity variables are proven to have altered over the time periods. The performance of a Wald estimation gives an indication that trade affinities are in fact dynamic although the results are not entirely significant for all variables. Based on the results, it is apparent that trade affinities still have a significant effect on trade flows in the European continent. Although, their effects have altered to become less significant in some cases while others have become stronger they all jointly share the attributes of affecting trade. These alterations can in turn be interpreted as dependent on the globalization process of the European continent. As globalization has progressed some affinities have decreased in influence while others have regained new importance.

In this thesis factors that explain Swedish pharmaceutical export as been analyzed. The period investigated is from 1995 to 2010. The investigation is concluded through the use of a gravity model. It investigates not only the GDP and distance variable but also the effects of GDP/capita, exchange rates and the effect of being a part of the internal market of EU. The effects of having access to the ocean and if the country has English as its official language is investigated as well as the effect of sharing the same religion. The results show that only a smaller subset of countries make up for most of the pharmaceutical export. The results also shows that the pharmaceutical export can be explained by the same variables as most other goods.

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.

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.

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.

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.