Yes / As a global strategic reserve resource, rare earth has been widely used in important industries, such as military equipment and biomedicine. However, through existing analyses based on the total volume of rare earth trade, the competition and dependency behind the trade cannot be revealed. In this paper, based on the principle of trade preference and import similarity, we construct dependency and competition networks and use complex network analysis to study the evolution of the global rare earth trade network from 2002 to 2018. The main conclusions are as follows: the global rare earth trade follows the Pareto principle, and the trade network shows a scale-free distribution. China has become the largest country in both import and export of rare earth trade in the world since 2017. In the dependency network, China has become the most dependent country since 2006. The result of community division shows that China has separated from the American community and formed new communities with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. The United States of America has formed a super-strong community with European and Asian countries. In the competition network, the distribution of competition intensity follows a scale-free distribution. Most countries are faced with low-intensity competition, but competing countries are relatively numerous. The competition related to China has increased significantly. The competition source of the United States of America has shifted from Mexico to China. China, the USA, and Japan have been the cores of the competition network. / This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation (Grant No. 22YJC910014), the Social Sciences Planning Youth Project of Anhui Province (Grant No. AHSKQ2022D138), and the Innovation Development Research Project of Anhui Province (Grant No. 2021CX053).

My dissertation focuses on the impact of oil trade ties and network on political instability: democratization, civil war onset, and coups. Oil is an important resource to most states, while a few states, especially autocratic states, can produce and export it. This implies that the break of oil trade ties may strategically or economically damage oil-importing states more than oil-exporting states. In the three essays of my dissertation, I argue that oil trade ties allow oil-exporting states to resist to external pressures and encourage oil-importing states to support important oil exporters in order to avoid losing access to a much-needed commodity. In order to measure the effect of oil trade ties on three political instability problems, I employ centrality indices in weighted networks of network analysis. Based on the centrality indices, I measure the effect of oil-importing states on oil-exporters’ abilities to resist international pressures and to obtain external support, and examine how an oil-exporting state’s oil trade ties affect its three political instability phenomena: democratization, civil war onset, and coup risk. Empirical results reveal three ways in which an oil-exporting state’s oil trade ties might affect its political instability; an autocratic oil-exporting state’s oil trade ties reduce external democratizing pressures and hinder democratization; an oil-exporting state’s oil trade ties attract external prewar support for its government, and reduce the likelihood of civil war onset when the exporter experiences external prewar support for its government; an oil-exporting state’s oil trade ties reduce the likelihood of coup.

Este estudo, referenciando-se nas íntimas e complexas imbricações entre história e memória, busca reconstituir e problematizar o período em que D. Pedro exerceu a Regência do Reino do Brasil, entre 22 de abril de 1821, retorno de D. João VI a Portugal, e 12 de outubro de 1822, quando foi aclamado Imperador do Brasil. Parte-se da hipótese, seguindo-se tanto obras clássicas sobre o período, a exemplo de Varnhagen e Pereira da Silva, quanto a historiografia mais recente, a exemplo da obra de Maria de Lourdes Viana Lyra, de que a autoridade de D. Pedro foi sendo construída nesse curto período entre diferenciados projetos políticos. Na trajetória do Príncipe, de Alteza Real a Imperador, procurou-se identificar, especialmente, as bases sociais e econômicas que sustentaram a afirmação de sua autoridade à frente do governo do Império do Brasil, o que implicou na separação de Portugal e na opção por uma monarquia constitucional, conforme delineada posteriormente na Carta de 1824. / This study, based on the intimate and complex conections between history and memory, intends to reconstruct and problematize the period through which D. Pedro retained the regency of the Brazilian Kingdom, from April 22, 1821, date of D. João VI\'s return to Portugal, to October 12, 1822, when D. Pedro was acclaimed Brazilian Emperor. The hypothesis hereby presented, guided by classic works regarding such period, e. g. Varnhagen and Pereira da Silva, as well as more recent historiography, e. g. Lyra\'s study, is that D. Pedro\'s authority was progressively built through this short interval of time among different political projects. At the Prince\'s course, from His Royal Highness to Emperor, it was intended to identify, particularly, the social and economical foundations that sustained his authority assertion, ahead of the Brazilian Empire\'s government, which lead to the separation from Portugal and to the option for constitutional monarchy, as later established by 1824 Constitution.

Este estudo, referenciando-se nas íntimas e complexas imbricações entre história e memória, busca reconstituir e problematizar o período em que D. Pedro exerceu a Regência do Reino do Brasil, entre 22 de abril de 1821, retorno de D. João VI a Portugal, e 12 de outubro de 1822, quando foi aclamado Imperador do Brasil. Parte-se da hipótese, seguindo-se tanto obras clássicas sobre o período, a exemplo de Varnhagen e Pereira da Silva, quanto a historiografia mais recente, a exemplo da obra de Maria de Lourdes Viana Lyra, de que a autoridade de D. Pedro foi sendo construída nesse curto período entre diferenciados projetos políticos. Na trajetória do Príncipe, de Alteza Real a Imperador, procurou-se identificar, especialmente, as bases sociais e econômicas que sustentaram a afirmação de sua autoridade à frente do governo do Império do Brasil, o que implicou na separação de Portugal e na opção por uma monarquia constitucional, conforme delineada posteriormente na Carta de 1824. / This study, based on the intimate and complex conections between history and memory, intends to reconstruct and problematize the period through which D. Pedro retained the regency of the Brazilian Kingdom, from April 22, 1821, date of D. João VI\'s return to Portugal, to October 12, 1822, when D. Pedro was acclaimed Brazilian Emperor. The hypothesis hereby presented, guided by classic works regarding such period, e. g. Varnhagen and Pereira da Silva, as well as more recent historiography, e. g. Lyra\'s study, is that D. Pedro\'s authority was progressively built through this short interval of time among different political projects. At the Prince\'s course, from His Royal Highness to Emperor, it was intended to identify, particularly, the social and economical foundations that sustained his authority assertion, ahead of the Brazilian Empire\'s government, which lead to the separation from Portugal and to the option for constitutional monarchy, as later established by 1824 Constitution.

This paper studies the topological properties of the International Trade Network (ITN) among world countries using a network analysis. We explore the distribu- tions of the most important network statistics measuring connectivity, assortativ- ity and clustering. We show that the topological properties of the weighted rep- resentation of the ITN are very different from those obtained by a binary network approach. In particular, we find that: (i) the majority of countries are character- ized by weak trade relationships, (ii) well connected countries tend to trade with poorly connected partners and (iii) countries holding more intense trade relation- ships are more clustered. Finally, we display that all structural properties of the ITN have remained remarkably stable over time.

A number of attempts have been made to facilitate agricultural trade liberalisation over the last decades. In spite of these efforts, trade liberalisation of agricultural and food processed goods has been modest. It is argued that this lack of trade liberalisation is explained by the existence of governments that are politically biased in the sense that they place anti-trade policies in order to favour powerful sectors in the economy. While there exists some evidence supporting this argument, it is difficult to assess how these biases influence agricultural trade patterns because existing quantitative modelling approaches do not normally consider simultaneously key aspects that characterise the food industry such as intra-industry trade and the existence of intermediaries in the supply chain with significant market power, among others. The objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative theoretical model that has the potential to accommodate these key aspects and corresponds to an international trade network model that extends the framework developed by Goyal and Joshi (2006). The model was solved by means of simulations and the results revealed that policy biased indeed can prevent trade liberalisation of agricultural and food processed goods. However, other factors that apparently have not been reported so far and that are related to the market power exercised by intermediaries were identified. They correspond to the position of a country in the trade network (i.e. a country occupying a central position in the network is less likely to support trade liberalisation independently of any policy bias), the possibility that global free trade is an unlikely outcome, and the possibility that the world is trapped in an inefficient international trade network. The results also revealed that the adoption of compensatory lump sum payments across countries (i.e. inter-node transfers) or across sectors within a country (i.e. intra-node transfers) could be used a potential tools to achieve global free trade in agriculture as they can compensate losers from trade by gainers achieving, as a consequence, Pareto improving outcomes.

No description available.

Forest and product certification was initially promoted as a means of enhancing sustainable management of forests in the tropics. However after almost two decades, there is still very little evidence of certified timber products originating from tropical countries. A number of approaches have been suggested to enhance the growth of forest certification in the tropics. These approaches such as that of the Forest Stewardship Council, Global Forest Trade Network of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Sustainable Forest Initiative and various private sector initiatives have all failed to facilitate forest certification. Therefore to enhance the development of forest certification in Ghana, the research work amongst others, draws on experiences in certification from other sectors such as cocoa, fisheries, tourism and oil palm to develop a model for promoting forest certification in Ghana. The research work uses elements identified in the literature review in developing a questionnaire for the survey of timber firms in Ghana. The research work identified stakeholder consultations, legal framework, resource rights, and the regulation of the domestic market as key elements for promoting forest certification in Ghana. The research recommends a phased approach to promoting forest certification with the first phase being verification of legality that adopts the European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) and the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) initiative. The study identifies this approach not only as a means of reducing cost to the private sector in pursuing forest certification but a means of drawing on support measures to enhance the regulation of the domestic market; a key component for promoting forest certification. The report argues that it is only through a well regulated domestic market can tropical timber producing countries achieve sustainable forest management and hence forest certification. The domestic market is therefore seen as a strong means of promoting certification since it will be internalised in the producing countries. None of the research on certification has so far identified the domestic market as a key factor to promoting forest certification and the research work argues that the slow pace of certification has been the lack of demand for certified products on the domestic market. Developing the domestic market is therefore seen as a key policy instrument for promoting the uptake of forest certification in Ghana and the tropics in general.