Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The 9/11 terrorist attacks spawned heated debates about border security roles in preventing terrorism. The United States is generally known as a "nation of immigrants," welcoming those seeking economic and religious freedom. This thesis explores the effects of three policy options (increased manpower/financial resources for border inspection agencies, technology, and private sector-government cooperation) on the prevention of terrorism within U.S. borders. It also explores the effects of those policy options on trade flows and the movement of legitimate people across international borders. Scope is limited to land border security policy from 1990-2003. Three case studies are included: (1) the Border Patrol's "prevention through deterrence" strategy, which began in 1994 and benefited from a monumental increase in manpower/financial resources to the INS; (2) an analysis of which border technology options are the most secure and inexpensive means of preventing illegal immigration, stopping the introduction of contraband into the United States, and maintaining legitimate flows of commerce/people that have increased since the passage of NAFTA; and (3) an analysis of why private sector-governmental partnerships that both increase transportation security while lowering border wait times developed on the U.S.-Canadian border but not on the U.S.-Mexican border. Implications are drawn for U.S. policy-makers. / Lieutenant, United States Navy

Under the prevailing global capitalist model, increased access to the formal economy for women is touted as a panacea to women´s empowerment and gender equality. Despite an unprecedented increase in women's participation in the global workforce and international labor standards, women are often assigned to precarious and exploitative low-wage work with little opportunity for social mobility. This thesis examines the effects of U.S.-Colombia Free Agreement and Labor Action Plan on women workers in Colombia's cut flower export-oriented industry. The impacts of free trade on women are contradictory, and despite hopes for the Labor Action Plan, women in the cut flower industry have seen little improvement in the working conditions and gender inequality. I explore the ways in which women actively resist exploitation and argue that women face powerful structural barriers to collective action under the imperialist and racist order of the capitalist patriarchy enshrined in Free Trade Agreements.

A central concern in economics is explaining the allocation of resources, its consequences for economic activity and the distribution of the associated economic revenues. This dissertation contains three essays examining the average and distributional effects of reallocations resulting from liberalization reforms or trade shocks. Chapter 1 examines the distributional effects of trade liberalization. A vast literature demonstrates that liberalization is associated with higher wage inequality. Nearly the entire literature considers comparative statics or steady states, which ignore dynamics and of necessity feature monotonic changes. I address these limitations by developing a micro-founded model that emphasizes the dynamics of reallocation between heterogeneous firms and workers in the presence of costly labor adjustments. Trade liberalization provides firms both new export markets and new sources of competition. Expanding high-paying firms increase wages to recruit better workers faster. Workers at firms threatened by competition accept wage cuts to delay their employers' exit and keep their job. This provides novel implications for both aggregate and within-firm inequality across a distribution of firm types. I show that key mechanisms of the model are consistent with a wide range of facts, some of which being examined in greater details in chapter 2. Results from the calibrated model suggest an overshooting of inequality on the path to a new steady state. This is consistent with evidence based on an event study of recent liberalization episodes. Inequality appears to peak about six years after liberalization, with one-fourth of the overshooting disappearing in the following ten years. Chapter 2 investigates the effects of firm growth on hiring and separations. I contribute to the literature on worker flows by studying the wages and characteristics of new and separated workers. First, I show that separations are an essential and robust component of firm growth. I argue that this may be the result of a more intense search for better matches at faster growing firms. Second, I find that wage offers to new hires increase with firm hiring rates. This is partly the result of the selection of more experienced workers. However fixed unobservable and variable observable worker characteristics cannot fully explain this relationship: the residual wage of new hires is significantly associated with the firm hiring rate. We interpret this as direct evidence of the firm-level upward-sloping labor supply curve predicted by the canonical models. We provide estimates of the slope of the curve using an instrumental variable approach to control for supply shocks. We find that a 10% increase in the hiring rate results in a wage increase of 1%. In chapter 3 Jaromir Nosal, Jonathan Vogel and I ask the following: What is the contribution of industry reallocation and productivity changes to the economic gains resulting from banking deregulation? How does local industrial structure determine the outcomes of banking deregulation? This chapter uses the staggered reforms of the banking sector in the U.S. between 1977 and 1997 to empirically investigate these questions. In the private sector, we show that the deregulation-induced reallocation of workers was directed towards industries with lower GDP per worker. Moreover, employment gains were associated with a reduction in productivity. Nevertheless we find that these effects are offset by across the board within-industry productivity gains. In addition, total output and aggregate productivity increased because of the reallocation of workers out of unemployment, self-employment and non-private industries towards the more productive private sector. Finally we find that initial industry mix can explain up to one third of the variation in state aggregate responses.

The goal of this thesis is to examine the effect of neoliberalism on developing nations. Specifically it will look at how neoliberalism has affected Mexico via the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mexico was chosen because since its depression in 1982 it has adopted continuing neoliberal policy, which according to its leaders, United States leaders, and international governmental bodies, is the path to development and the improvement of the standard of living for all people. This work begins by examining the historical path of neoliberalism to provide context for choosing Mexico for the focal point of this thesis, as well as context for the situation occurring in Mexico. It then examines neoliberalism via its scholars who are in support of it and against it. This is followed by an evaluation method based off of Amarya Sen's capability approach to development. Then several previous studies are examined to prove qualitatively that there have been adverse effects experienced under NAFTA in Mexico, by all of the established evaluation parameters. Then this thesis turns to a discussion of some descriptive statistics relating to the approach set up by Sen. It concludes with quantitative approach showing over interesting correlations of neoliberalism, to other variables indicative of capabilities via linear regression.

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<p>Since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994 there has been an incentive to create free trade agreement with all the American countries. The next step to reach a free trade agreement like this has been the CAFTA, where also the Central American countries are involved in an agreement with the U.S. El Salvador is part of this agreement. The project has both been criticized and praised. Due to these different opinions the thesis wants to give answers to how CAFTA will affect different sectors in the economy in El Salvador and how the agreement will affect the people working in these sectors. The studied sectors are the agriculture, the assembly industry and the micro, small, and medium businesses in the informal sector. With the help of theories about free trade, specialization, factor mobility and growth, together with information about the experiences from Mexico and interviews from El Salvador, the answers are given to the problem. El Salvador will have comparative advantages in some products in the agriculture sector. The assembly industry will be able to compete if they can stand against the competition with China. The micro, small, and medium businesses are more orientated to the local market and will not be affected. In all sectors the lack of support from the government is a problem. The FDI is expected to increase but there will not be any technological transfer. Workers in the farm sector will move to the cities where they will find jobs in the assemblies or in the informal sector. Those who do not find jobs will emigrate to the U.S.</p>

<p>I have conducted a survey of journal articles that have examined the relationship between free trade and economic growth. In particular, I have carefully selected six empirical studies that were published over a ten-year period and critically reviewed, and evaluated these studies in depth. I have also extensively presented and discussed the issues as well as the controversies that are related to the various measures of openness. In a number of the trade-growth empirical studies researchers have made major attempt to identify the relationship between free trade and economic growth. Most of the trade-growth studies show that there is a positive relationship between free trade and economic growth. However, some of these influential studies have been subject to strong criticism, mainly due to a number of methodological shortcomings. As for the million-dollar question: Does free trade advance economic growth? My conclusion is that this question is not yet resolved, because although researchers have devoted considerable efforts to show a positive trade-growth relationship, nevertheless, the methodologies and the measurements applied in these studies have been fragile to the scrutiny of critics.</p>

This thesis contributes to the analysis of optimal industrial and strategic trade policy in the presence of oligopoly and other forms of imperfect competition, so as to make contact with important empirical regularities and policy concerns, such as international R&D collaboration, unionization and free trade. First, in the context of international competition in which R&D plays an important role, we study the consequences of allowing governments to subsidize R&D and coalition deviation on the R&D collaboration networks. Then we investigate the formation of FTAs as a network formation game. While the analysis of welfare effects takes the central stage, we also analyze the nature of trading regimes that are consistent with the incentives of individual countries. We address the issue of conflict of interests among firms, consumers and governments as well. Finally, we integrate the analysis of international R&D collaboration and strategic trade policies, and demonstrate how an asymmetric equilibrium arises from an international trade model with symmetric countries and symmetric firms, and study whether it is sometimes possible to improve national welfare by jointly implementing trade and industrial policies.

Since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994 there has been an incentive to create free trade agreement with all the American countries. The next step to reach a free trade agreement like this has been the CAFTA, where also the Central American countries are involved in an agreement with the U.S. El Salvador is part of this agreement. The project has both been criticized and praised. Due to these different opinions the thesis wants to give answers to how CAFTA will affect different sectors in the economy in El Salvador and how the agreement will affect the people working in these sectors. The studied sectors are the agriculture, the assembly industry and the micro, small, and medium businesses in the informal sector. With the help of theories about free trade, specialization, factor mobility and growth, together with information about the experiences from Mexico and interviews from El Salvador, the answers are given to the problem. El Salvador will have comparative advantages in some products in the agriculture sector. The assembly industry will be able to compete if they can stand against the competition with China. The micro, small, and medium businesses are more orientated to the local market and will not be affected. In all sectors the lack of support from the government is a problem. The FDI is expected to increase but there will not be any technological transfer. Workers in the farm sector will move to the cities where they will find jobs in the assemblies or in the informal sector. Those who do not find jobs will emigrate to the U.S.

This essay is about the European union freetrade treaty negations with Mercosur. I have in this essay used a qualitative content analysis, to study from the EU perspective the reasons to why, the EU and Mercosur suspended the free trade treaty negations 2004, and after several years resumed the negotiations again in 2010. The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding from the EU perspective of why free trade negotiations were suspended and then resumed. In order to achieve a deeper understanding of this event, I have applied neorealism and neoliberalism on the explicit statements and the implied actions, as these theories may provide different explanatory power of implied causes of negotiations. I have come to the conclusion that the theoretical perspectives can indeed explain explicit statements and implicit actions for suspended and resumed negotiations with Mercosur. The implicit reasons for suspended negotiations are among others that the EU has an egoist thinking concerning a free trade treaty. The EU wish to gain more benefits then Mecosur with a free trade treaty, which lead to Mercosur wanted to suspend the negotiations. Another implicit reason is that the EU was thinking entirely on how much that were going to gain in relation mercosur, because of this kind of thinking, the EU probably realized that they were going to loose on a treaty. The implicit reasons for resumed negotiations are among others are that the EU genuinely wants to collaborate with Mercosur as much as they can with the purpose to gain together as much as possible. Other implicit reason is mutual dependence, which means that the EU needs Mercosur and vice versa to strengthen the global economy, and to give job opportunities and growth on both sides. Another implicit reason to resume the negotiations again is that the EU has grown stronger as an economic block, because of this, the EU has greater advantage of their demands with Mercosur. Further more, this essay surely point out that the EU has a lot of difficulties to come up with an agreement with Mercosur. But hopefully the EU can in the nearest future reach a free trade treaty with Mercosur.