This thesis examines from an international political economy(IPE) perspective the determinants and the effectiveness of the EC's protective measures against Korean exports to the EC market. Both the determinants and the effectiveness of protective measures, in countries which adopt such restraints, have been very controversial issues in the academic world. Through broad and industry-specific case analyses, I found that approaches regarding determinants of protectionism in the IPE literature are not fully applicable as determinants of EC protectionism against Korea and I extracted several determinants which are more relevant to the issue of EC-Korea trade protectionism. These are primarily divided between economic and political determinants. The economic determinants include 1)a causal relationship between protectionism by the United States against Korea and protectionism by the EC against Korea, 2)Korea's neo-mercantilist policy approach and concentration of exports on a limited range of products, and 3)inter-industry trade structure between the EC and Korea, such as growing trade disputes in specific sectors. The political determinants, I found, are l)political expediency of the EC's protectionism against Korea, which can be seen in examples of EC's policy implementation procedures, such as low rate of actual imposition of the EC's import restraints, and the use of anti-dumping investigations as a preliminary gambit in order to obtain concessions, and 2)a form of " Japan Complex" effective against Korean exports to the EC. In addition to the above determinants, there are some specific determinants(or specific procedures and incidents) in connection with individual industries--the EC's inconsistent policy implementation and the clerical errors due to the growing workload of the EC Commission(textiles and clothing case), businesscycle(iron and steel case), the EC's retaliation against closed markets abroad, and the successful experience of Italy and France in restricting imports of Korean footwear through VER5 (footwear case), and EC's built-in protectionism and failure in demand forecast, and the deep-rooted distrust of Korean CTV exporters by the EC(CTV case). In order to analyse the effectiveness of protective measures, I began by examining approaches by David Yoffie and Patrick Messerlin. For the test of these approaches, I examined the effectiveness of EC's import restraints against Korean products by comparing how Korea's exports of those products changed, in terms of volume and value, following EC action. My findings are that the EC's protective measures were successful in all cases excepting one: the footwear products from Korea, the imports of which continued to increase during the 1987- 1991 period despite EC restraints. I found that the major determinant of effectiveness of EC's VERS was Korea's international competitiveness in terms of revealed comparative advantage (RCA) ratio of the subjected products. Specifically, Korea's strong competitiveness(and some weakening of EC's competitiveness) in footwear contributed to the continued increase in shipments of Korea's footwear to the EC market. In contrast, EC's VERs against iron and steel products, in which the EC has maintained international competitive strength, were very effective in reversing growth of imports from Korea. Additionally, EC's impositions of AD duties proved to be very effective as a means of protecting EC industries against foreign threat; all Korean products subject to EC's AD measures showed a declining trend in exports to the EC market during the 1987-1991 period, regardless of any weakness or strength in international competitiveness of subjected products. I concluded that the ineffectiveness of import restraints, suggested by David Yoffie for U.S.-NIE5 trade, does not apply to EC-Korea trade. Patrick Messerlin's approach, however, is applicable in the ECKorea trade. I also found that arguments which only link job losses in the EC with foreign imports are flawed. EC companies face job losses not only as a direct result of Korean imports, but also from the inability of EC industry to restructure, and the remedial action taken by them to counter Korean competition--such as reorganization and rationalization of EC companies, offshore processing activities in cheap labour cost countries for major labour-intensive processes, and automation of production facilities.

No description available.

At the first ever talks between leaders from developing countries and the G7 group of leading industrial nations in the year 2000, James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, said "it is important that when the G7 address the issue of debt they address a range of inter-related questions including investment in developing countries and technology transfers." To this end a call for partnership between the developed and the developing nations was made. This thesis evaluates the importance of foreign investment and trade promotion in the economic development of Ghana as a country within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The thesis specifically investigates the usefulness of development preconditions in attracting foreign investments into developing countries to boost the production and manufacture of semi-processed and manufactured goods to enhance exports, trade, economic growth and development with a view to reducing poverty margins. Little research has been carried out on how development preconditions and trade promotion activities can be effectively used in developing Africa to forge the investment partnership between the developed and developing countries such as Ghana and the ECOWAS countries. In the light of recent alarming rates of poverty in Africa - mainly due to poor economic development - there is the need for a systematic evaluation of how Ghana and other African countries could employ development preconditions such as infrastructure, low inflation rates, good literacy levels (education), stable political and social environment to engender an enabling investment climate that would attract foreign investors to invest in their countries. The use of consistent trade promotion activities would also positively impact on export and trade for economic growth and development. Lessons that Ghana as a country within ECOWAS could learn from the investment and trade success of the East Asian countries have been discussed in the study. A Ghana Investment and Trade Framework is developed. This incorporates the possibility that development preconditions and vigorous trade and investment promotion activities influence increased Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and the production of manufactured goods for export. These have the potential of expanding trade for increased economic growth in a country like Ghana. The methodological framework for testing the two hypotheses of this study is based on two types of statistical techniques. In evaluating the proposition that development preconditions influence foreign direct investment attraction in Ghana, we rely on the use of econometric regression analysis using the MICROFIT statistical software. (i.e. the influence of the development preconditions of Infrastructure, Inflation, Education and Political Stability in the period 1966-1998 (30 years)) - in attracting foreign investment into Ghana. The second hypothesis, which links overseas trade promotion to FDI attraction was, however, tested using the discriminant analysis based on Statistical Programme for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. This technique was also used to test the robustness of the findings based on the regression analysis in the case of the first hypothesis. The thesis empirically assesses the impact of the selected development preconditions and trade promotion activities (Ghana's participation in overseas trade fairs) on the level of FDI attracted into Ghana during the specific time periods of between 1966 and 1997. The criteria used include the level of FDI levels attracted into Ghana for 30 years due to (a) the influence of existing development preconditions, and (b) the influence of trade promotion activities (Ghana's participation in overseas trade fairs). The latter was for 15 years (1985-1999) due to lack of data on the earlier years in Ghana. The impact of the development preconditions of Infrastructure, Inflation and existing FDI on levels of new FDI attracted into the country were shown to be positive in the Regression Model. These results show that the presence of development preconditions in developing countries positively influence the level of FDI attracted into these countries. There was, however, no conclusive evidence that Ghana's trade promotion activities (Ghana's participation in overseas trade fairs) for the period had any clear and significant influence on FDI attraction into the country. The findings of the thesis outline the importance and need for Ghana and other African countries to create significant development preconditions in their countries, in order to attract sufficient and significant foreign investments into their countries and help to boost the production of manufactured goods for trade and exports in order to enhance economic growth and development. The conclusion is, therefore, that Ghana as a country within ECOWAS can achieve economic development through efficient investment (FDI) attraction policies and strategies; and the existence of vital development preconditions, and vigorous and intensive trade and export promotion activities (consistent participation in overseas trade fairs) could prove highly catalytic in this achievement.

This dissertation comprises three essays. In the first two chapters, I examine the performance of Chinese firms in the context of trade liberalization: one chapter looks at the quality of China's exports and the other investigates the productivity impact of China's tariff reduction. In the third chapter, I study the change induced by a tax reform in the institutional incentive structure faced by Chinese village leaders.

This PhD. dissertation consists of three essays to fill some gaps in the recent research in international trade and endogenous growth theory. The first essay explores the dynamic effect of interaction of research and development (R&D) activities among countries on endogenous economic growth. It attempts to fill the gap between the current endogenous growth research focused on independent R&D activities and decision-making in the international competition and the interdependent R&D competition in reality. This paper finds that the growth rates, welfare, and investment on R&D in the world do differ between independent R&D activity and interdependent R&D activities among countries. The welfare for each country in the open-loop Nash equilibrium is higher than that of the Markov-perfect Nash equilibrium, and both are lower than that in the cooperative game. The model shows that the ability to commit turns out to make every country better off. The interesting results are that when an increase in the number of countries does increase the growth rate in the open-loop Nash equilibrium, it is very possible to have the negative effect on the growth rate in the Markov-perfect equilibrium. Particularly, the model shows that the tendency of free-ride rises with more countries in the competition. The more general models with durable physical capital, and with the endogenous rate of time preference following Uzawa-Epstein tradition, also prove these conclusions. / The second essay turns to the Samuelson-Diamond overlapping generation paradigm, a finite-horizon overlapping generations model with education proposed by Michel (1993). The focus is shifted to the effect of trade on growth. It turns out that when trade affects the formation of human capital, endogenous growth is possible even in the simplest economy with a single sector and constant returns to scale technologies, which is opposite from Boldrin's (1992) and Jones and Manuelli's (1992) results. / While the existing theory of trade under oligopolistic competition is mostly static in nature, the third essay fills this gap by modeling international trade under oligopoly in a dynamic setting. This essay adopts the dynamics in the model provided by allowing the demand curve to shift over time as a result of "habit formation". It shows that when the importing country is committing to a policy of voluntary import expansions (VIEs), in the certain condition (i.e. k > 1), VIEs can improve the global welfare, the welfare of the importing country, and the profit of both firms. So, in a sense, voluntary import expansion is truly voluntary.

The first two chapters study the effect of foreign lobbies on trade policy of a country which is a member of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). They rely on a monopolistically competitive political economy model in which the government determines external tariffs endogenously. In the first paper the effect of foreign lobbying under the FTA is examined empirically using Canadian industry-level trade data that allow differentiating of lobby groups by the country of origin. The analysis suggests that the presence of foreign lobbying has a significant effect on the domestic trade policy: the presence of an organized lobbying group in an FTA partner country tends to raise trade barriers while an organized lobbying group of exporters from outside of the FTA is associated with less protection. The second paper analyses political viability of FTAs and their effect on the world trading system in the presence of lobbying by organized foreign interest groups. I show that the FTA in the presence of an organized lobby group in a prospective partner country may cause an increase in the level of protection against imports from third countries and impede trade with non-member countries. I also find that foreign lobby may encourage the local government to enter a welfare-reducing trade-diverting FTA. Finally, I show that the FTA increases the lobbying power of the organized lobby groups of the member countries, which can potentially obstruct the viability of welfare-improving multilateral trade liberalization. The last paper shows that the reason for a higher capital-labor ratio observed for exporting firms is a higher capital intensity of their production technology. Exporters are more productive, more likely to survive and, hence, more likely to repay loans. A higher repayment probability causes creditors to charge lower interest rate and reduces the marginal cost of the firm when a more capital-intensive technology is used. Here, a reduction in international trade costs stimulates exporting firms to use more efficient capital-intensive technologies, while non-exporters switch to less capital-intensive ones. This within-industry change in the composition of technologies reinforces the productivity advantage of exporters and contributes further to industry-wide productivity improvement. The results of model simulations highlight that to 10% of welfare and productivity gains of trade liberalization come from the adoption of new technologies by existing firms in the industry, thus amplifying the effect of resource reallocation from firms' entry and exit.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007. / Title from title screen (viewed Aug. 13, 2008). Advisors: Patrick Conway ... [et al.]. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Economics." Discipline: Economics; Department/School: Economics. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-127). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on December 28, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

Universiẗat, Diss.--Heidelberg, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 345-355).