Esta dissertação foi realizada como requisito parcial para aquisição do título de mestre em Relações Internacionais pelo Instituto de relações Internacionais da Universidade de São Paulo (IRI-USP). Ela compreende dois artigos diferentes. No primeiro, discute-se a teoria da integração regional a partir de abordagens da Ciência Política e da Economia Internacional. Para tanto, desenvolve um estudo de caso a respeito do processo de integração regional na África, qual seja, compreender os resultados no domínio da cooperação econômica a respeito do CEDEAO (Comunidade Econômica dos Estados da África Ocidental). O argumento principal do artigo é o de que o processo pode ser lido de acordo com a perspetiva neofuncionalista da integração regional. No segundo artigo avalia-se o efeito da criação da CEDEAO através do modelo Gravitacional. Trabalha-se com dados em painel e corrige-se o viés de seleção para estimar o efeito do acordo regional em termos de criação e desvio de comércio. Os resultados indicam que a CEDEAO nem promoveu a criação de comércio intra-bloco e nem produziu o efeito de desviar o comércio internacional com terceiros países de fora do bloco, em benefício dos membros. / This research was conducted as partial requirement for the achievement of the master\'s degree in International Relations at the Institute of International Relations, University of São Paulo (IRI-USP). It comprises two separate articles. First, given the economic objective of the initial motivation for the establishment of ECOWAS, we question why the ill=observed results were not an impediment to the pursuit of the integration. The interpretative insights were derived from historical and political context in dialogue with the neo-functionalist theory of regional integration. The article`s main argument is that the challenge of sub-regional security led to the outgrow of political objectives. Understanding that there is a new convergence of interests, the bloc undergoes constant pursuit of a consistent institutional matrix including the objectives which were added, and in the other hand, reflects the degree of involvement of the various national groups that determine the external behavior of each member country. In the second paper, we attempt to evaluate the effect of the instruments of the trade policy on welfare in ECOWAS applying a Gravitational Model. Using panel data and correcting for selection bias, we estimate the effect of the agreement in terms of trade creation and trade diversion. Results show that ECOWAS did not diverted trade, but had a small effect on intra block trade. The variable that captures the effect of trade creation is not statistically significant.

China has undergone significant urban growth and industrialization over the last 30 years and its incredible development continues to move ahead at an increasingly rapid pace. In terms of urban expansion, China has just recently surpassed the world’s average urbanization rate of 50%, as it moves its massive population from rural to urban areas at an astonishing speed. It’s massive population and fast urbanizing speed aside, China is also unique in terms of its socio-political system and historical-cultural context: it is a hybrid of government planning and market forces. Since it encompasses a large part of the global population and has had a vastly different urbanization experience than that of Western countries, around which most theories are based, studying China’s urbanization is an opportunity to contribute to the field of urban studies in an unprecedented manner. However, these differences also make it difficult to develop a comprehensive study of China’s urban system since the predominant theories in the field are best suited to Western cities. This research rises to this challenge by systematically studying the relationship between the socioeconomic and biophysical processes in the Chinese urban system to understand the interaction between human and physical factors, and the landscape patterns that result from these interactions. This complex urban system is examined using a hierarchical, top-down approach. At the highest level is a Macro-scale analysis of the national urban system, followed by a study of the regional urban system: the JingJinJi Metropolitan Area at the Meso-scale, and finally a Micro-scale examination with a focus on the city of Beijing. Since urban systems develop over both time and space, the urban system is analyzed spatio-temporally on all three levels. Research at the national scale is composed of two parts. First, the challenges and opportunities of China’s urban development since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 are investigated in a general context. The institutional barriers that impede the management and continuation of China’s urban development are also discussed. Rank-size Analysis and satellite images are used to present the structural transitions of city scaling and urban clusters. These changes come with a series of challenges that are also iterated and discussed. This is followed by an analysis of the spatial distribution and transition patterns of China’s urban system using Centrographic Analysis, particularly since the post-1979 reforms. Second, the Macro-scale research focuses on a study of the urban hierarchy that is based on inter-city interactions as determined by the Synthesized Gravity Model (SGM). Under this model socioeconomic variables are synthesized and represented by the Influential Factor, while the Function Distance is derived from a Network Analysis that is based on multiple transportation methods. As an improvement on the conventional Gravity Model (GM), the SGM is used to accurately establish and represent the nodal structure of China’s urban system, the evolution of its hierarchical structure, and the relationships that exist between the nodal structure and socioeconomic factors. The results based on the SGM indicate that China’s national urban system is characterized by the emergence of urban clusters with stronger inter-city interactions since the 1990s. However, development among cities within certain urban clusters is not even, although the general pattern indicates a lessening inequality among cities. Spatially, while most cities at the top of the hierarchy are located in the east of China, cities in the middle and west of the country are also gaining higher positions in the hierarchy over time. On the Meso-scale, the applicability of the Cellular Automata (CA)-based SLEUTH model for regional urban growth pattern is studied through a focus on the JingJinJi Metropolitan Area (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei). By integrating socioeconomic factors into a modified SLEUTH model, the urban growth dynamics and future development scenarios of the area are simulated and predicted. The results based on the CA model show that this region is characterized by a dynamic development pattern with high spreading and breeding growth rules that relies greatly on the growing transportation systems. It also allows for the projection of three possible future urban growth scenarios, each occurring under different environmental and development conditions, showing the future urban growth with or without further intervention. This research confirms that four factors play essential roles in the formulation of the urban growth mechanism of the JingJinJi Metropolitan Area: Urban policies, Industry restructuring, Rural-urban migration, and Reclassification of urban boundaries. The Micro-scale study of Beijing is conducted from two perspectives: the social and natural. The social aspect adopts the factorial ecology approach to identify the social landscape patterns and the factors that have shaped Beijing’s social space in 1990 and 2000. The social mosaic has experienced a significant change due to suburbanization, resulting in a more dynamic and complex internal structure since the 2000s. From a natural perspective, Beijing’s physical landscape patterns are extracted by processing remotely sensed images that have the same temporal span. The physical change through landscape metrics demonstrates that Beijing’s expansion has generated a more complex and fragmented land use/cover pattern. Meanwhile, transportation systems play a significant role in urban expansion, although the expansion across the space (zonal rings and directional sectors) is not even. Finally, the relationship between the social and physical landscapes is quantitatively defined by the Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) technique, using physical landscape metrics as dependent variables and social areas as independent variables. The GWR is able to demonstrate the relationship between the social and physical landscapes at this level: as a city’s social mosaic becomes more varied over time it results in the fragmentation of that city’s physical space.

The thesis analyses the effect of the Eastern enlargement on goods flows into four CEECs. In the beginning, the Eastern enlargement and numerous related economic effects are briefly characterised. After that it focuses on trade diversion and trade creation effects, starting with a concise discussion of the traditional customs union theory and followed by the explanation of the choice of the estimation method. A gravity model applied on a panel data set is then used to model the import flows into the EU15 and the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The results showed that a careful choice of the model specification and estimating technique is needed and the model that controlled for four sources of unobserved heterogeneity (time, country pair, importer, and exporter specific characteristics) was chosen. Based on this model's results, we could expect a significant increase of imports from EFTA into these countries but aggregately we should not expect any trade diversion as no further redirecting of import flows from the rest of the world is predicted. Eventually, some of the real trade flow developments (territorial and commodity structures and revealed comparative advantages of selected regions) are described.

La hausse de la volatilité des cours des matières premières agricoles de ces dernières années couplée à une réorganisation des filières débutées dans les années 1990, posent la question de l'approvisionnement des pays du Maghreb en blés et produits dérivés du blé. Ce travail se propose, dans ce contexte, de comprendre les modalités d'importations des blés et leur influence sur le choix du partenaire commercial. Nous nous appuyons, pour cela, sur un cadre théorique où les acteurs perçoivent les biens qu'ils importent, transforment ou commercialisent comme une collection de caractéristiques répondant à cinq logiques (le prix, la qualité, les services associés, les relations avec le fournisseur et le risque de non disponibilité) et sélectionnent leur variété préférée en fonction de ces caractéristiques. L'organisation des filières détermine l'acteur qui pourra imposer ses préférences au niveau des marchés internationaux. Une enquête au niveau des filières montre une préférence de l'ensemble des acteurs pour les caractéristiques ayant traits à la qualité et au prix sur les trois autres logiques, avec une plus grande sensibilité des acteurs privés pour la qualité, les acteurs publics étant plus focalisés sur les seuls prix. Enfin, une analyse des importations à l'aide d'équations de gravités confirme, d'une part la, prédominance des variables associées à la qualité et aux prix sur les autres variables pour expliquer le choix du partenaire commercial. D'autre part, le modèle de gravité montre que plus la part des importations effectuée par les entreprises privées est importante, plus les variables associées à la qualité sont influentes dans le choix du fournisseur. / Last years' rise of commodity price volatility and commodity chain reorganization which began in the 1990's questioned the issue of supply in wheat and wheat products for Maghreb countries. This work will try to understand the different wheat and wheat product import mode and their influence on trade partner choice. We settle our analyze on a theoretical framework in which actors perceive the goods they import, process or sell as a collection of characteristics corresponding to five logics (price, quality, related services, relations with the supplier and the risk of unavailability) and select their favorite variety in terms of these characteristics. Filière organization selects which actors are able to impose their preferences in international markets. A survey among actors shows a preference for the characteristics relating to quality and price on the three other logics, with a greater sensitivity of private actors for quality, public players are more focused solely on price. Finally, an analysis of imports using gravity equations confirms, on the one hand, predominance of variables associated with quality and prices on other variables to explain the choice of trading partner. On the other hand, it shows that the larger the share of imports carried by private companies on a filière, the more the variables associated with quality are influential in the choice of supplier.

Based on the gravity model by Baier and Bergstrand (2001), we use a static and dynamic panel data approach to estimate the relative contributions of income growth, income convergence, and the reductions in tariffs and trade costs to the growth of intra-EU trade over the period 1960 to 2000. The results suggest that income growth was the major force, accounting for approximately two third of total growth. Trade liberalization still had a sizeable effect, accounting de facto for the rest of growth, while income convergence played only a minor role. Reductions in trade costs had no significant effect on the growth of intra- EU trade. The results turn out as robust against several robustness checks and the use of alternative estimators. / Series: EI Working Papers / Europainstitut

This master dissertation deals with broadly discussed topic -- are there really some trade enhancing effects for countries that have adopted the euro? This thesis provides an estimate of the effect of the European Monetary Union on trade, taking into account panel data of 37 economies during sample period 1995 -- 2012. The sample consists of 27 European Union members and 10 non-EU OECD countries. After applying gravity model of trade and controlling for gravity-model-specific influences, the effect of the euro on trade obtained from the results of the estimation is positive and statistically significant 9 per cent.

In the present dissertation, we study the United States’ domestic trade and domesticmigration with special focus on Politics, Foreign Import and Size. This study sheds light on the literature of International Economics, Regional Economics, and Development Economics. In Chapter 1, using a Gravity model for trade between the U.S. states and employing CFS data of the year 1993 - 2017, we find that politically and economically similar states trade more among themselves. We use three different definitions of political similarity based on election outcomes, and they all give similar results. For economic similarities, we follow the literature on Linder’s hypothesis. In Chapter 2, by using the same CFS data and Gravity model which we have used in Chapter 1, we analyze the impact of foreign imports by the States on their domestic exports. We find fairly strong support for our hypothesis that foreign imports promote domestic exports. We carry out a series of robustness checks, and the qualitative results remain the same. Chapter 3 investigates the impact of size on the U.S. inter-state migration over the period of 1998-2017 employing structural gravity model of migration. We use population, GDP and Land area as a proxy to measure the size of the states. We find that people are moving from big states to small states. We find that the American’s are moving from big states to small states. We also find that increase in income tax as a proportion of population in U.S. states, positively affect the interstate migration in the origin state but negatively affect the destination state.

Our research reveals the impact of foreign direct investment on the intensity of bilateral trade in the Central Eastern European (CEE) region, focusing on countries of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Estonia (CEE-6). Previous literature and research results indicate that there is a complementary or substitute relationship between FDI and trade. However, the studies of this subject on the CEE region are scarce. Our study employs the gravity model to analyze the impact of FDI on bilateral trade with panel data of each country from 2005 to 2019. Based on the panel data, we investigate the commercial integration among CEE-6 and with main EU commercial partners. Our results suggest a prevalence of complementary relationships in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, yet each country demonstrates the relationship through different facts. The complementary relationship is attributed to the prevalent vertical FDI in CEECs, especially in the automotive industry. However, Estonia displays a substitutive relationship between outward FDI and trade. Moreover, we find the commercial integration only exists among the Visegrad group.

The expansive nature of water distribution system makes them susceptible to threats such as natural disasters and man-made destructions. Vulnerability assessment research efforts have increased since the passing of “Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act” in 2002 to harden WDS. This study aimed to develop a method that locates critical nodes without hydraulic analysis of every failure scenario, applicable for any size WDS, incorporates critical infrastructure, and capable of verifying method accuracy. The Flow Distribution method is the application of the gravity model, typically used to predict traffic flows in transportation engineering, to a distribution system. Flow distribution predicts the amount of demand and population that would be affected if any node in the system were disabled by solving for the distribution of each node’s outflow. Flow Distribution is applied to the hypothetical city, Anytown, USA using the computer simulation program WaterCAD to model two different disaster scenarios. Results were verified by analyzing sixteen failure scenarios (one for each node) to measure the actual demand and population effect, which was then compared to the nodes predicted by Flow Distribution. Flow Distribution predicted the critical nodes with 70% accuracy and can still be improved with future work.

Ce travail étudie la nature de la relation entre commerce et Ide sur le plan théorique et empirique. Théoriquement, il y a deux sortes de relations entre commerce et Ide: substitution et complémentarité. La nature de cette relation peut être la conséquence de facteurs exogènes, déterminant de la spécialisation des pays ou encore le résultat de la stratégie endogène des firmes multinationales dans l’organisation de leurs activités à l’échelle internationale. On parle de relation de complémentarité quand il y a un lien positif entre commerce et Ide, et de relation de substitution quand il y a un lien négatif entre commerce et Ide. Empiriquement, avec le modèle de gravité, on applique les techniques économétriques sur données annuelles de 2000 à 2014 sur les données bilatérales de 18 pays principaux investisseurs de l’OCDE, d’abord dans l’industrie manufacturière et ensuite selon les zones géographiques, avec un ensemble de 75 pays partenaires repartis dans ces différentes zones géographiques. Ces 75 pays sont constitués de, 17 autres pays de l’OCDE, 17 pays de l’Amérique Latine non OCDE, 3 pays de l’Europe de l’Est non OCDE et 38 pays de l’Asie non OCDE. Pour l’analyse du secteur manufacturier, on trouve en exportation comme en importation, une relation de complémentarité entre commerce et Ide. Pour l’analyse par zone géographique, on trouve en exportation comme en importation, une relation de substitution pour la zone OCDE et l’Amérique Latine non OCDE et une relation de complémentarité pour la zone Europe de l’Est non OCDE. Cependant pour la zone Asie non OCDE, on trouve une relation de substitution en exportation et une relation de complémentarité en importation. / This paper studies the nature of the relationship between international trade and foreign trade direct investment, both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, there is in general two sorts of relations between international trade and direct foreign investment: substitution and complementarity. The nature of that relation may either be the consequence of exogenous factors, determinants of country specialization or the result of endogenous strategy of multinational firms in the organization of their activities internationally. We speak of complementarity relation when there is a positive link between international trade and investment, and substitution relation when there is a negative link between international trade and investment. Empirically, with the gravity model, we apply econometric technics on yearly data of the panel during 2000 and 2014 period on bilateral data of eighteen countries main investors of OECD, at first in manufacturer industry and then depending on geographical areas, with a set of seventy-five countries divided up in these geographical areas. The seventy-five partner countries consist of seventeen other countries of OECD, seventeen Latin America countries non-OECD, three eastern European countries non-OECD, and thirty-eight Asian countries non- OECD. Regarding the analysis of the geographical area, the estimations point out, in exportation as in importation, a substitution relation for the OECD area and Latin America non-OECD area and a complementarity relation for eastern European non-OECD area. However, for Asian non-OECD area, the estimations show, a substitution relation in exportation and a complementarity relation in importation.