Nowadays, being a member of the World Trade Organization for a country means becoming an active participant of the world trade relations. On May 16, 2008, Ukraine officially became the 152th member-country of the WTO. The thesis describes the process of Ukraine's acceptance to the WTO that lasted for more than fourteen years. Moreover, in the work it is analyzed Ukraine's gains and losses after the two-year WTO membership. The study focuses on strength and weaknesses of the WTO membership in common and for Ukraine specifically.

The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of labor cost, openness, and demand side variables on employment for the case of Turkey using the panel data of private manufacturing industry at three digit level for 25 sectors for the period of 1973-2001. We use a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model, which allows for cross-sectoral heterogeneity. The estimation results show that higher growth is more effective in stimulating employment compared to lower labor costs. The reliance of Turkey and many developing countries on labor market flexibility and openness as the unique tools of employment policy reflects a pro-capital incomes policy bias rather than a necessity. The results confirm the Keynesian emphasis on demand-side policies to fight against unemployment. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

This diploma thesis studies the influence of trade liberalization on the sources of the economic growth of Brazil. The theoretical part of this work presents some definitions of economic growth and characteristics from two basic economic growth models: the Solow model and the endogenous growth model. Regarding trade liberalization, some international trade theories are presented in this thesis, including the basis of protectionist measures, which are frequently implemented around the world. The practical part of this work analyzes the course of the Brazilian economy throughout different periods, where the GDP growth rate, sources of economic growth and the presence of protectionist policies are taking into account. Later on, the thesis reviews the trade liberalization process that Brazil experimented in the 1990s and how this process influenced the performance of the Brazilian GDP. For long time, the topics of positive effects of free international trade and the unavoidable globalization process have been on the table. Brazil enjoys conditions that are given for economic success. However, the question is whether Brazil will manage to make full use of these favorable conditions and handle the obstacles that come up along the way to its development, while enforcing free international trade and promoting its full liberalization aiming to positively influence economic growth.

[pt] Embora comércio internacional e práticas organizacionais sejam conhecidos determinantes da produtividade de firmas, a evidência empírica sobre a relação entre ambos é escassa. Este artigo explora variação exógena crível em redução tarifárias em setores da indústria para mostrar que firmas no Brasil, após o choque, são menos organizadas em termos de hierarquias. Consistente com a literatura de hierarquias baseadas em conhecimento, aumento de concorrência estrangeira reduz significativamente a parcela de gerentes e o número de camadas organizacionais em uma firma. Além disso, nós encontramos movimentos composicionais importantes dentro dos setores: apesar de possuírem tamanhos similares, firmas entrantes possuem menos gerentes e camadas do que as que deixam o mercado. Usando dados abrangentes com identificação mais crível que trabalhos anteriores na literatura, nosso artigo documenta fatos estilizados da organização de firmas em um país subdesenvolvido, assim como contribui para o estudo de um determinante potencialmente importante da produtividade no agregado. / [en] While it is known that international trade and organizational practices are determinants of firm productivity, empirical evidence on their relation to each other is scarce. This paper explores credible exogenous variation in tariff reductions across manufacturing sectors to show that firms in Brazil are less structured in terms of hierarchies following the shock. Consistent with the literature on knowledge-based hierarchies, increased foreign competition reduces significantly the share of managers and the number of organizational layers on a firm. Besides, we find notable compositional movements within sectors: although similarly sized, entrant firms have fewer managers and layers than leavers. By using comprehensive data with more credible identification than previous work in the literature, our paper documents stylized facts on firms organization in a developing country, as well as contributes to the study of a potentially important determinant of aggregate productivity.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between trade liberalization, measured using the Heritage Foundation’s Trade Freedom indicator, and human development, measured using the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index, in subSaharan Africa’s Least Developed Countries between 1990 and 2011 as data allows. In addition to exploring the relationship between these two variables, alternative factors that influence human development are examined in bivariate correlations with human development as well as used as control variables in a multiple regression analysis. Namely, this study includes government effectiveness, the percentage of the labor force employed in the agricultural sector, the percent of Gross Domestic Product made up of the sale of agricultural products, geography, and armed conflict as control variables. By conducting a cross-national bivariate correlation analysis as well as a cross-national multiple regression analysis for the years between 1990 and 2011, this study highlights how, when included in a model with control variables, trade liberalization goes from being a statistically significant predictor of human development index scores to losing its significance altogether. The results from this study indicate that trade liberalization, government effectiveness, and geography, more specifically being landlocked or not, do not have statistically significant effects on human development for LDCs in the region. However, this study finds that for every unit increase in the percentage of the labor force working in agriculture as well as the percentage of GDP made up by agricultural products, a lower human development score can be expected. Armed conflict also has a statistically significant, negative effect on human development.

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This thesis analyses the impact of three different trade shocks on labour market outcomes and firms’ performance. The first chapter evaluates the impact of an increase in import competition on employment, gender employment gap and structural transformation in Ethiopia over the 1994-2013 period. In the second chapter, the objective is to investigate the changes in the Egyptian trade policies on wages and job stability, with a panel dataset covering a 20 years period (1998-2018); the last chapter examines the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on firms with different modes of internationalization, in terms of changes in sales and in business strategies. By exploiting three different very rich micro-level datasets, we study trade shocks under three different perspectives: a worker-level perspective, a firm-level perspective and a local labour market perspective. What emerges is that the impact of trade shocks is ultimately an empirical question, and that the direction of results greatly depends on the economic context under analysis. When trade liberalization is implemented in countries whose structural transformation process is still at an early stage, as in the Ethiopian case, this can harm rather than benefit their economies. On the other hand, the evidence in the third chapter suggests that being interconnected in the international market can help firms mitigating the shock, not only when the shock is domestic or idiosyncratic, but also, as in the case of Covid-19, when the it affects the whole global economy.

Yes / Over last few decades, there has been a growing interest among researchers in understanding the link between trade liberalization and regional disparities within the context of an individual country. In this study, we develop the first ever single-country multiregional Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model for the Indian economy to investigate this linkage. Overall our results suggest that, in the short run, trade liberalization has a beneficial impact on the rich and fast-growing middle-income states and a marginal or negative impact on the poor states.

A presente tese analisa a configuração, a reestruturação e a dinâmica do setor de celulose e papel no Brasil (em especial o seu mercado de trabalho), mostrando que esses processos foram distintos para as indústrias desse setor, que são: a indústria de celulose, a indústria de papéis e a indústria de artefatos de papéis. A tese está organizada em quatro capítulos, incluindo a Introdução. O segundo capítulo, Análise do processo de configuração do setor de celulose e papel no Brasil, destaca como a conduta das empresas multinacionais, as políticas públicas e o dinamismo dos mercados doméstico e externo geram evoluções e dinâmicas distintas para as indústrias desse setor, desde sua origem até 2009, e implicaram em suas distintas inserções na Divisão Internacional do Trabalho - DIT ao longo do tempo. Demonstra-se que a configuração dessas indústrias foi diferenciada nos últimos cinquenta anos, sendo que a expansão da indústria de celulose foi para atender o mercado internacional e as indústrias de papéis e artefatos de papéis são mais centralizadas em atender o mercado doméstico em resposta à forma como os países se organizaram dentro da DIT. O terceiro capítulo, Impactos da reestruturação do setor de celulose e papel no Brasil sobre o desempenho de suas indústrias, usou dados em painel e estimou equações visando identificar se as variáveis de estrutura e de abertura comercial tiveram influência sobre o desempenho das indústrias do setor no período de 1986 a 2007 com base nos dados da PIA IBGE, da BRACELPA e do Sistema ALICE-Web. Pode-se concluir que a variável de concentração de mercado (HHI) teve impacto positivo sobre a medida de desempenho margem preço-custo; o aumento na taxa de importação tem relação negativa com a margem preço-custo; e a origem do capital tem relação positiva com a medida de desempenho considerada. O quarto artigo, Impactos da liberalização comercial e da reestruturação industrial sobre o mercado de trabalho do setor de celulose e papel no Brasil, analisa a dinâmica do mercado de trabalho desse setor entre 1996 e 2008 usando dados da RAIS. Verificou-se: 1) aumento no número de empregados no setor de celulose e papel nesse período, mas redução desse número para a indústria de celulose e para a indústria de papéis; 2) a indústria de celulose emprega proporcionalmente mais trabalhadores com maior escolaridade e idade do que a indústria de artefatos de papéis; 3) os salários pagos na indústria de celulose foram maiores que nas outras duas indústrias e no setor de celulose e papel como um todo; 4) predomínio do uso da mão de obra masculina e diferencial salarial entre homens e mulheres nas três indústrias, entretanto, esse diferencial foi menor na indústria de celulose em 2008; 5) a maioria das variáveis explicativas propostas para analisar o impacto sobre os salários apresentou o sinal esperado nas regressões. As variáveis abertura comercial, proporção de mulheres em relação aos homens e escolaridade média dos trabalhadores foram as que apresentaram melhor significância estatística. As duas primeiras atuam para reduzir o salário e a última para aumentá-lo. / The present thesis analyzes the configuration, the restructuring and the dynamics of the pulp and paper sector in Brazil (paying a special attention to its labor market), showing that these processes were different to the industries of this sector: the industry of pulp, industry of papers and industry of paper-made products. The thesis is organized in four chapters, including the Introduction. The second, Analysis of configuration process of pulp and paper sector in Brazil, highlights how the conduct of multinational companies, the public policies and the dynamism of domestic and external markets generate distinct evolutions and dynamics for the three industries inside the pulp and paper sector in Brazil since the origin of this sector until 2009 and implicated in distinct insertions of these industries in the International Work Division - DIT along time. It is demonstrated that the configuration of these industries was differentiated during the last fifty years, pointing out the expansion of pulp industry, from 1970 on, to attend the international market and the paper and paper artifacts industries are more focused in attending the domestic market in response to the way the countries organized themselves inside DIT. The third chapter, Impacts of pulp and paper sector´s restructuring in Brazil on the performance of its industries, organized data in panel and run equation to determine if the variables of structure and commercial openness that had influence the performance of industries under analysis. The period of time considered was from 1986 to 2007 and data utilized came from PIA IBGE, from BRACELPA and from Alice-Web System. It can be concluded that the variable of market concentration (HHI) had positive impact on the performance measure cost-price margin; the increase in the importation rate has negative relation with price-cost margin; and the capital´s origin has positive relation with the performance measure considered. The fourth chapter, Impacts of trade liberalization and industrial reorganization the market place of pulp and paper sector in Brazil, analyses the labor market dynamics of this sector between 1996 and 2008 using data from RAIS. The main findings are: 1) increase in the number of employees of the pulp and paper sector in this period, but reduction of this number to the pulp industry and to the paper industry; 2) the pulp industry employs proportionally more workers with higher scholarity and age than the paper-made products industry; 3) salaries paid in the pulp industry were higher than in the other two industries and in the pulp and paper sector as a whole; 4) predominance of masculine labor force and salary differential between men and women in the three industries, however, this differential was lower in the pulp industry in 2008; 5) the majority of the explicative variables proposed to analyze the impact on the salaries presented the expected signal in regressions. The variables commercial openness, proportion of women in relation to men and workers average scholarity were the ones that presented better statistic significance. The first two act to reduce salaries and the third one to increase salaries.

Esta tese aborda o desenvolvimento da regulação internacional sobre o comércio de serviços educacionais, em especial nos acordos preferenciais de comércio de Austrália, Chile, China, Cingapura, Estados Unidos, Índia e União Europeia. O seu objetivo foi avaliar o atual nível de liberalização comercial da educação superior no plano global, de modo que sua compatibilidade com o direito à educação pudesse ser criticamente analisada, assim como os seus possíveis impactos sobre a regulação da educação superior no Brasil. Para tanto, a pesquisa começa pela realização de entrevistas com atores que acompanham o processo de comercialização da educação superior no Brasil. Os passos seguintes envolvem a compreensão do funcionamento das disciplinas internacionais sobre o comércio de serviços, da formulação das posições no processo negociador e, finalmente, dos compromissos em serviços de educação superior em acordos preferenciais de comércio. Uma primeira hipótese é de que, mesmo sem acordos de comércio, o mercado brasileiro já se encontra significativamente liberalizado no que diz respeito aos investimentos estrangeiros em educação superior, sem qualquer restrição ao ingresso de capital internacional. Ainda assim, a regulação internacional do comércio de serviços aprofundaria esse processo a partir da ideia de consolidação do marco regulatório liberal doméstico e de mecanismos que conduzem à aceleração do processo de liberalização comercial. / This thesis analyses the development of international regulation on trade in educational services, especially in preferential trade agreements signed by Australia, Chile, China, Singapore, United States, India and the European Union. The goal was to determine a parameter of the current global level of trade liberalization on higher education, so that the compatibility between trade agreements and the right to education could be critically examined, as well as their possible impacts on the regulation of higher education in Brazil. Therefore, the research began by conducting interviews with professionals that accompany the commercialization process in the Brazilian higher education sector. The following steps involved understanding the operation of international disciplines on trade in services, the formulation of positions in the negotiating process, and finally, the commitments on higher education services in preferential trade agreements. A first hypothesis is that, even without trade agreements, the Brazilian market is already significantly liberalized regarding foreign investment on higher education, without any restriction on the inflow of international capital. Even so, international regulation on trade in services would deepen this process from an idea of consolidation of a liberal domestic regulatory framework and mechanisms leading to accelerate trade liberalization process.