<p> This paper is an attempt to examine the effects of economic integration in the Central African Customs and Economic Union. The focus is on one form of economic integration, the customs union. A review of the theoretical literature indicates that customs unions should bring changes in the patterns of production, consumption and trade of the countries involved, and would be advantageous through the enlargement of markets, stimulus to investment and competition. From the locational point of view, the formation of customs unions could aggravate the clustering tendencies of industries to few attractive locations resulting in a polarized form of development. </p> <p> The examination of the Central African Customs and Economic Union shows that little change has been achieved in the first decade of the union. It appears that the traditional theory of customs union which was originally designed for the industrial countries is of limited applicability for the developing countries. It is suggested in the paper that the theory should be adapted to the particular characteristics and needs of developing countries and that, since economic integration is partly based on concepts from the location theory, more work is needed to examine economic integration and customs union in the context of location theory. </p> / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

<p> An important problem existing in Canada today is that of unequal regional economic development. It is a basic problem of some regions having more and other regions having less. </p> <p> In a country where economic growth is quite often viewed as an accumulation of regional economies, it is important to identify the inequalities that exist between and within these regions. Of the numerous forms of economic disparities, income is generally considered the most prevalent. </p> <p> The majority of research performed on this topic of regional income disparities tends to deal with either regional productivity levels or regional income distribution and redistribution. </p> <p> This study however, is concerned with disposable income levels that exist throughout and within Canada's regions, in an attempt to determine that the quality of life is not equitable across these regional boarders. The main observations of the study were that, definite disparities exist not only between Canada's regions but, within them as well. Also, that metropolitan areas of the country experience a better quality of life, based on calculated welfare statistics, than do non-metropolitan areas. Finally, it was evident that Canada's economic disparities in most recent years have remained relatively constant. </p> / Thesis / Bachelor of Arts (BA)

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The new world economic conditions and increasing global competition have changed the way in which manufacturing companies view production/operations management and their role in achieving greater productivity, lower costs, operational efficiency and better customer service. Several manufacturing planning and control systems have been developed in order to enable manufacturers to meet these new challenges. Material Requirements Planning System-MRP I and its extension Manufacturing Resources Planning System-MRP II, the much proclaimed systems, have gained wide acceptance from both academics and practitioners. The research presented here concentrates on the key issues of MRP practices and the effectiveness of MRP systems. Evidence from the literature shows that over 60 percent of MRP I/MRP II users have failed to achieve the expected benefits. Also, a review of the literature reveals that very little work has been done to provide mathematical models to relate these benefits to their determinants. Furthermore, it reveals that much was written about MRP practices based on case studies, but very few studies survey-based have been conducted to investigate MRP implementation. None of these studies was conducted in less developed countries. The researcher has attempted to fill some of these gaps in this study by posing three key questions, namely: how have MRP systems been implemented in Egyptian manufacturing companies?, what are the benefits obtained from these which have been implemented?, and what are the explanatory variables of MRP systems effectiveness?. Accordingly, the objectives of the current study are threefold: " To investigate MRP practices in Egyptian manufacturing companies. " To assess the effectiveness of MRP practices measured by the benefits obtained from MRP implementation based on the expectations and perceptions of MRP users in Egyptian manufacturing companies. " To explorea nd examineth e explanatoryv ariableso f MRP systemse ffectiveness. This study has drawn on an extensive review of the literature and previous empirical studies in western industrialised countries and in newly industrialised countries. The strategy used to achieve the research objectives involved quantitative analysis of questionnaire data. Data for the study were collected by a postal questionnaire. One questionnaire was sent out to each company within the Egyptian industrial ex-public sector. Companies were asked if an MRP user in their organisations could respond (production manager or materials manager or inventory control manager or master scheduler or management information systems manager). Of 200 questionnaires sent out, 123 replies were received, giving a response rate of 61.5%. Of the 123 replies, 93 respondents were usable giving a usable response rate of 46.5%: some unusable responses were the result of a high proportion of missing values. The final usable sample was broken-down into respondents from companies which had implemented MRP systems and respondents from non-MRP companies (52: 41). Extensive quantitative methods to analyse questionnaire data were used i. e. Frequency Analysis, Mean Value, Standard Deviation, Mann-Whitney test, T-test, Kruskal Wallis, One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Paired T-test, Spearman's Correlation Coefficient, Bartlett's test, K-M-O technique, Principal Component of Factor Analysis, Eigenvalue criterion, Varimax Rotation technique, Skewness method, Cook's Distance measure, Scatterplots method, Adjusted R2, OLS technique, Forward and Backward Stepwise strategies and ACE model (Alternating Conditional Expectation technique). This study has provided important insights into the current situation and practices related to rvRP users in Egypt. The main findings of this study indicated that MRP practices in Egypt are relatively similar to those in the newly industrialised countries and in the west. The findings of this research indicated that Egyptian users believe that the expected benefits from MRP implementation have been obtained, though most of the companies which have installed MRP are relative beginners. However, not all MRP users attained the same degree of MRP benefits. Our findings indicated that the MRP benefit-determinant relationships take a nonlinear form for several relationships. Knowledge of this non-linearity may be advantageous for both MRP managers and users in order to manage these relationships effectively for achieving the effectiveness of MRP practices. Finally, valuable implications have been drawn for managers and practitioners to achieve more successful implementation of MRP systems.

This thesis aims to investigate and study a variety of dimensions of the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI), domestic investment (DI) and economic growth in the host countries. The main purpose of this thesis is to empirically examine the implications of the relationship and complementarity between FDI and DI, and the contribution of the host country’s factors in achieving the benefits of FDI inflows. To achieve the aim and to examine the argument of this thesis, the thesis was structured to include six chapters, containing three empirical chapters. These empirical chapters studied different hypotheses of the relationship between FDI and economic growth. The first empirical chapter attempted to find the answer to these two questions: (a) does FDI contribute positively to GDP; and (b) does FDI really crowd out DI in the host countries. The second empirical chapter also tried to offer the answer to this question: does FDI contribute to economic growth in developing countries alone, or does it depend on its initial conditions? Furthermore, the third empirical chapter studies the direct impact of not only FDI but also other foreign capital inflows on economic growth, and their indirect impact on economic growth, which works via domestic investment channel. This chapter searched for the answer to this question: how do FDI and other types of foreign capital inflows affect economic growth? Chapter one presents the motivation of the thesis and sets its aim and structure. Chapter two presents a background of economic literature on the relationship between FDI, DI and economic growth. This chapter also provides a brief review of theoretical and empirical background on the interrelationship between those variables, in order to reach a better understanding of the contributions of FDI and DI to economic growth in the host countries. Based on this chapter, Chapter three studies empirically the relationship between FDI, DI and economic growth by applying a multivariate VAR system with the error correction model (ECM) and time-series and panel-data techniques of cointegration to investigate the links between FDI, DI and GDP. The empirical evidence reported in this chapter shows that, on the one hand, FDI crowds out DI in the host countries, either in the short-run or in the long-run based on the results of time-series analysis. On the other hand, Panel-data techniques provide strong evidence that FDI has crowding-in effect on DI. Both time-series and panel-data analysis also provide evidence that FDI can positively affect economic growth in host countries. The results of this chapter also show that GDP have a positive impact on FDI and DI, either in the short-run or in the long-run. The results also show that DI is positively related to GDP and FDI in receiving economies. Based on the results of Chapter three, Chapter four investigated empirically whether FDI contributes to economic growth alone, or does it depend on the host country’s conditions. The empirical evidence stated in this chapter shows that FDI inflows have, in general, a significantly positive impact on growth; however, the magnitude of this effect depends on the host country’s absorptive capacity as measured by human capital, technology gap, infrastructure, institution quality, financial market, and trade openness. The results of this chapter show that the host country must reach a threshold of absorptive capacity in order to gain the positive externalities offered by FDI inflows. The results of this chapter also show that domestic investment, human capital, infrastructure development, financial market development, institution quality, and trade openness are positively related to economic growth, while the technology gap is negatively related to economic growth. Based on the results of chapter three and four, chapter five explored whether the positive impact of FDI and other foreign capital inflows (portfolio investment and loans inflows) in DI on the host economies can be considered as a growth-enhancing role not only for FDI but also for other foreign capital inflows. The results reported in this chapter show that all types of foreign capital inflows have a significant positive influence on economic growth in the host economies. The empirical evidence reported in this chapter also shows that FDI inflows have a more significant effect on economic growth than other type of capital inflows, such as portfolio investment and loans inflows. The results of this chapter also show that all types of foreign capital inflows have a strong crowding-in effect on DI in the host countries; however, FDI inflows have a greater crowding-in effect on DI than portfolio investment, and loans inflows are in between them. The main result presented in chapter five is that the impact of FDI, portfolio investment and loans inflows on economic growth, which works via domestic investment channel, is not a significant one, but also is generally greater and more robust than the direct impact in the host economies. Generally, the most important contribution of this thesis is that a better understanding of the relationship between FDI, DI and economic growth in developing countries, taking into account the influence of the host country’s absorptive capacity, and different types of foreign capital inflows.

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This thesis contains three essays. In the first essay, I examine whether a temporary policy can affect long-run house hold behavior. I look at evidence from a nine-month compulsory rationing imposed on Brazilian households’ electricity use in 2001, exploiting differences in the policy’s implementation across regions as a quasi-experiment to test its short-and long-run impacts on households’ electricity consumption patterns. I find that the rationing program led to a persistent reduction in electricity use of 14% even ten years later. Unique household level microdata on appliance ownership and consumption habits suggest that the main source of persistence is changes in the utilization of electricity services, rather than technology adoption. In the second essay, we examine the effects of China’s recent emergence into the world economy in local labour markets in Brazil. Much of the literature have viewed China as a competitor. However, China is also an increasingly large consumer of goods produced abroad, and an increasing share of its import demand is for primary goods. Using census data, we compare trends in migration, unemployment, employment structure (primary/manufacturing/services), informality and participation on Bolsa Família program in areas affected by the ‘China competition shock’ and the ‘China demand shock’. We find significant and heterogeneous effects from these two ‘shocks’. In the third essay, we employ an unified theoretical framework to structurally estimate the effect of changes within China on the production in Brazil and in the rest of the world. Based on the Ricardian model of trade of Costinot et al. (2012), we perform counterfactuals exercises to analyze how countries and industries in Brazil would have performed in the absence of the recent Chinese ascension. Results suggest that changes in China’s comparative advantage hampered manufacturing sector abroad. We find no support for the idea of China demand (taste) shock towards raw materials.

Much cross-sectional data in econometrics is blighted by dependence across units. A solution to this problem is the use of spatial models that allow for an explicit form of dependence across space. This thesis studies problems related to spatial models with increasingly many parameters. A large proportion of the thesis concentrates on Spatial Autoregressive (SAR) models with increasing dimension. Such models are frequently used to model spatial correlation, especially in settings where the data are irregularly spaced. Chapter 1 provides an introduction and background material for the thesis. Chapter 2 develops consistency and asymptotic normality of least squares and instrumental variables (IV) estimates for the parameters of a higher-order spatial autoregressive (SAR) model with regressors. The order of the SAR model and the number of regressors are allowed to approach infinity with sample size, and the permissible rate of growth of the dimension of the parameter space relative to sample size is studied. An alternative to least squares or IV is to use the Gaussian pseudo maximum likelihood estimate (PMLE), studied in Chapter 3. However, this is plagued by finitesample problems due to the implicit definition of the estimate, these being exacerbated by the increasing dimension of the parameter space. A computationally simple Newton type step is used to obtain estimates with the same asymptotic properties as those of the PMLE. Chapters 4 and 5 of the thesis deal with spatial models on an equally spaced, d dimensional lattice. We study the covariance structure of stationary random fields defined on d-dimensional lattices in detail and use the analysis to extend many results from time series. Our main theorem concerns autoregressive spectral density estimation. Stationary random fields on a regularly spaced lattice have an infinite autoregressive representation if they are also purely non-deterministic. We use truncated versions of the AR representation to estimate the spectral density and establish uniform consistency of the proposed spectral density estimate.

This thesis sheds light on the main aspects of economic inequality in the Iraqi Kurdistan. The main objective of this journey is to determine the reasons for the growing inequality in the period under study (2004-2010) in Iraqi Kurdistan, hoping to reach some conclusions which pave the way to researching it. Within this long journey, it has been argued that inequality is firstly inherited. Families have left different stores of abilities and skills to their children. However, this is not the only type of inheritance inequality. Part of the inheritance inequality has been caused by the nature of the economy and the political system, which have dominated in Iraq and Kurdistan during the last three decades. In the past, government intervention and massive regulation have been responsible for corruption and expanding inequality as a consequence, left another period of chaos. After removing Saddam, the political system has shifted to a free market, but without bringing the promised fruits for people. Corruption has a hand in expanding distances between individuals, social groups, and geographical areas. Though elements of corruption can be seen through distributing national incomes, an evaluation for the public policies tells us that even in the absence of corruption, inequality can be expanding. The culture of the labour market does not let the individuals perform well. It does not offer equal opportunities for two agents of the same age who hold the same certification. The traditional division of labour, between the market and the home, can still be observing. This division has made two types of market: the labour market and the marriage market. Women are socially encouraged to spend their energy and time on collecting the abilities that are necessary to make a good choice in the marriage market. The skills of the marriage market are clear: to be an honoured wife, who has had no previous relations with men and able to prepare food and take care of their children. Nevertheless, when they enter the labour market, they see another division: some jobs are for men, others for women. The official surveys, done by international organizations in accordance with the Ministry of Planning of both Iraq and Kurdistan, in addition to the two surveys conducted by the researcher, show that there has been a huge gap between urban and rural areas as well.