With the recent agreement on a framework in the Doha Round for the WTO, trade liberalization is taking another step forward. Unfortunately, export taxes get overlooked as only five countries have this protectionist/rent seeking policy: Argentina, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia and Ukraine (USDA FAS, 2004). However, the impact of these policies can be felt all over the world. The focus of the case study is on the differential export taxes (DET) placed on soybeans by the Government of Argentina and analyzing the impact of government intervention on trade. Argentina is the third-largest producer of soybeans, and the worldâ s largest exporter of soybean oil and meal with domestic consumption totaling less than five percent of the meal and oil that is processed. In Argentina there is a constant export tax level of twenty percent that is applied to all commodities in agriculture but in the case of oilseeds, raw soybeans are taxed 3.5% more than all other grains and oilseed products. This differential tax favors the exports of valued-added products, i.e. soybean oil and meal. Previous attempts to eliminate the DET have failed. FEDIOL, the Federation that represents the vegetable oils and fats industry in the European Union, filed a complaint against Argentina in the late 1970s and again in the early 1980s, but failed because the DET was not listed as a subsidy under the GATT. / Master of Science

This dissertation extends the Grossman-Helpman models of endogenous trade policy formation to incorporate local and global production and consumption externalities, and to allow governments to choose domestic production or consumption policies together with trade interventions. The models presented are among the first to allow environmental quality and the structure of industry protection to be simultaneously evaluated in a political economy framework, when some industry groups lobby their governments for higher output prices. The equilibrium tax and subsidy policies are implicitly expressed as the sum of distinct political support, terms-of-trade, and local and global environmental effects. Whether these effects reinforce or counterbalance each other depends on whether an industry is organized, whether the good is imported or exported, whether the externality is caused by production or consumption, and, in the large-country models, on whether governments set policies noncooperatively or cooperatively. The model results imply a political economy version of Bhagwati's normative targeting principle: governments use the most efficient policy available to satisfy the lobbies, to address the externalities, and, in the noncooperative large-country model, to exploit international market power. All of the initial Grossman-Helpman results (for the small-country model and the noncooperative and cooperative large-country models) are shown to be special cases where governments have only trade policy available and there are no externalities. In the small-country model and the cooperative large-country model, when there are production externalities, the lobbying of a polluting industry usually leads to lower environmental quality than socially optimal, but with terms-of-trade effects or for particular preferences cases the equilibrium policies may induce environmental quality higher than socially optimal. When there are consumption externalities, and the government has consumption (or production) as well as trade policy available, environmental quality will be socially optimal (again, unless governments exploit market power). Thus, depending on the policies available, a local or global consumption externality will be fully internalized, even though polluting industries lobby and production may be distorted. This dissertation also shows that--in contrast to standard economic theory--the use of trade policy alone can lead to higher environmental quality than a more direct domestic policy alone. / Ph. D.

The transportation of containerized shipments will continue to be a topic of interest in the world because it is the primary method for shipping cargo globally. The primary objective of this study is to analyze the impact of the Panama Canal Expansion (PCE) on the trade flows of containerized shipments between the United States and its trade partners for US exports and imports. The results show that the Panama Canal Expansion would affect the trade flows of US imports and exports significantly. The major findings are as follows: (1) the PCE affects not only US domestic trade flows, but also international trade flows since inland transportation and ocean transportation are interactive, (2) delay cost and toll rate at the Panama Canal do not have a significant impact on trade volume and flows of US containerized shipments after the Panama Canal Expansion mainly because delay cost and toll rate at the canal account for a small portion of the total transportation costs after the PCE, (3) West Coast ports would experience negative effects and East Coast ports would experience positive effects from the PCE, while Gulf ports would experience no effects from the PCE, and (4) an optimal toll rate is inconclusive in this study because changes in toll rate at the canal account for a small portion of the total transportation costs and the PNC competes with shipments to/from Asia shipping to the US West. / Mountain Plains Consortium (MPC) / U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)

Presented master's thesis deals with comprehensive free trade agreements (CFTA) and deep and comprehensive free trade agreements (DCFTA) concluded or proposed by the European Union. Its objective is to identify necessary conditions for initiation of (D)CFTA negotiation, determine areas covered by (D)CFTAs and contemplate an effect of (D)CFTAs on EU's position. In the first part of master's thesis, theoretical framework needed for research is introduced. The concept of soft power as defined by Joseph Nye is presented. The inductive method is applied to scrutinize comprehensive free trade agreements between the EU and Canada, Colombia, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and Tunisia, respectively. The research proved that the EU has never started DCFTA negotiation with an authoritarian regime. However, it is not a single condition for initiation of DCFTA negotiation, and four more conditions are defined. A broad scope of (D)CFTAs beyond tariff-related issues is demonstrated. DCFTA and CFTA differ about their relation to EU acquis. Approximation in selected areas is compulsory under DCFTA. Trough CFTAs, the EU was able to uphold EU and international standards and promote fundamental rights. Consequently, the EU's soft power has been enhanced thanks to (D)CFTAs.

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This dissertation is composed of three essays. In the first essay, I construct a supply and demand model for crude oil markets. I then fit the model to historical price and quantity data to be able to project future oil prices. Ex-post forecasts using this model predict historical price trends more accurately than most oil forecasting models. The second essay incorporates the supply and demand model from the previous paper into a complex systems model that also includes oil futures markets. Adaptive-agent investors in futures markets choose from a set of rules for predicting future prices that includes the rational expectations equilibrium rule, as well as rules that rely on more short-term information. The set of available rules evolves following a genetic algorithm; agents choose which rules to follow based on their past performance. While outcomes vary depending on the specific assumptions made, under a plausible set of assumptions investors can fail to anticipate shortages properly, leading to significant price spikes that would not occur in the rational expectations equilibrium. The last essay addresses the impacts of carbon cap-and-trade policies on consumers. I calculate how higher carbon prices would affect the prices of different consumer goods, how consumers would respond to the price changes, and how the price changes, along with revenue recycling, would impact consumers of different income levels.

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<p>This thesis develops a computable, non-linear programming, general equilibrium model of the Canadian textile sector for the purpose of addressing certain trade policy issues.</p> <p>One of the unique features of the model is the specification of the objective function a CES nested in a Cobb-Douglas function. This objective function incorporates the assumption of diminishing marginal utility', an assumption which is almost universally accepted in microeconomic theory but which is conspicuously missing in linear programming models. This objective function also allows for imperfect substitutability between domestically produced textiles and imported textiles.</p> <p>The textile sector is significantly disaggregated to allow for the interconnections among the various textile industries in the sector. In addition, unlike partial equilibrium models which do not consider what happens to other industries outside the sector under study, this model is able to shed same light on the behaviour of these industries.</p> <p>The model is solved by an optimization package called MINOS (a modular in-core nonlinear optimization system) and then used to predict the 1979 variables to set a benchmark for the model. The model predicts most variables reasonably well.</p> <p>The results of the experiments confirm Bhagwati's concept of equivalence as applied to general equilibrium models. The results also show that if protection in textiles is removed, imports will pour in, leading to declines in output and employment in the textile industries. The finding that there is considerable anti-protection in the textile sector agrees with the view expressed by other writers. The results also show that, in general, a textile industry at a later stage of processing tends to expand if it is the only one protected and an industry at an early stage of processing tends to contact if it is the only one protected.</p> <p>Given any quota, its tariff equivalent can be computed using the model. With reference to tariffs and subsidies, the results show that one cannot say categorically that one means of protection is generally preferable to the other, a finding which is consistent with the trade distortions literature.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)