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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Three Essays in Empirical Economics

Oscherov, Valeria 10 September 2013 (has links)
This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay estimates a demand function for compressed natural gas as a fuel substitute to diesel fuel for firms with hybrid fleets. The data is from the Energy Information Administration, for the years 1989 to 2009, for 47 states. Results show that an increase of $0.10 in the price of diesel fuel will increase compressed natural gas demand by 5.59%. The second essay focuses on regional trade agreements (RTAs). A number of studies have found that RTAs significantly increase members' trade flows. While recent studies have begun to explore the reasons for this, none have examined whether the RTA trade effect varies systematically with the number and type of policy areas covered by the agreement. While the empirical trade literature has shed considerable light on the trade-creating ability of RTAs (Grant and Lambert, 2008), much less is known about why these agreements are so successful. In this study, we draw on a new database from the World Trade Organization of trade policy areas covered by RTAs to examine whether the degree of trade liberalization is an important determinant of the RTA trade effect. An augmented, theoretically consistent gravity equation is developed to explore the effects of RTAs on trade, conditional on the policy areas they include. In particular, we investigate two policy areas that are particularly important for agricultural trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS) and technical barriers to trade (TBT). The results suggest that harmonization of non-tariff measures inside RTAs matters: Agreements that liberalize these policies increase members' agricultural trade by an additional 62 percent compared to agreements that do not. We conclude that studying the components of RTAs -- in particular, the policy areas covered by these agreements -- is important when analyzing the determinants of RTA trade effects. The third essay uses Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to study the effect of membership in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the predecessor to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the WTO on trade flows. Existing GATT/WTO literature is not univocal as to whether membership in the GATT/WTO increases trade flows. In this study, Bayesian model averaging (BMA) is used in the presence of theoretical uncertainty to address whether membership in the GATT/WTO plays a role in the gravity model. Several datasets are examined: a dataset from a previous study; and two datasets compiled for this study, world trade and agricultural trade. Results show, for all three sets of data, that membership in the GATT/WTO does belong in the gravity equation and increases trade flows. / Ph. D.
2

A Comparative Study on Smugglingthe Crackdown of the Customs across the Taiwan Strait

Tsai, Ping-Fang 09 July 2007 (has links)
The smuggling action is a kind of illegally criminal behavior, that¡¦s inference not only can make our society in trouble and let the economic development slowdown, even make a great effect upon the country¡¦s policies, but also due to our national badly side reactions in the international society. It¡¦s also making the region of international regime in trouble. Base above reason, all of countries in the world have same the goal that enforcement tracking and crackdown the illegally smuggling actions. Unfortunately the illegally smuggling actions from time to time occur frequently in some special area of the across strait between Taiwan and Mainland China. Actually in above area the illegally smuggling actions are as famous as ¡§The Golden Triangle¡¨ in the world. Our customs anti-smuggling parties, they do their best in order to crackdown the illegally smuggling actions near the several years, but the result is not so good. Most the people want to know ¡§Why do the people want to smuggle¡¨? The answers are following reasons. ¡§The first reason is easily to get rich and the second reason is easily to pass the special path¡¨. It is the reason why, the most of people would rather venture than continue for waiting chance. I got the other reason, that because the most of smuggling people are very understand all the situation of the environment which area of the across strait. The smuggling people also understand ¡§Both of government of across strait are had quite different political situation, and both of government are lack a nice communication regime and path¡¨. Cause of the same reason, much more global illegally criminal organizations rather like to do some illegally smuggling actions in above area, especially in near several years. According to the Customs Law¡¦s regulations: Customs are the main organization on crackdown smuggling. So that they have to do it¡¦s well. Our customs really hard to work in order to get much more crackdown smuggling cases, and they also have got a lot of smuggling goods (which cargo never finish duties) in the past several years too. But actually the illegally smuggling actions still active in same area and continue to harm our country and our social security right now. All the data of this research report are including following two different situations. The first are according to across strait customs anti-smuggling actions they confiscated from smuggling people in past several years. And the second are collected from some smuggling people are able to choose the way of accomplish goal in near some years. But I am sure that all of them are real things. Especially we can get some knowledge base from different regime and different method of crackdown smuggling process in Mainland China customs. We hope that our customs can learn from above ¡§knowledge base¡¨ and to use for our anti-smuggling actions in the near future. I think it could be nice to our customs business of smuggling crackdown.

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