The purpose of this research was to empirically examine the impacts that the presence of a state trading enterprise (STE) has in the international wheat market. There are numerous types of STEs that function in different ways to achieve many different types of policy objectives which are often unique to a particular STE. Although the existence of a STE is justified by the countries involved using numerous policy rationales, the fear that they are used as a front for trade protectionism is a prevalent concern. One specific aspect of a STE that often brings this concern to the forefront is whether or not the STE has the exclusive privilege of monopoly status.<p>The empirical objective of this thesis was to determine specifically if the use of a STE exporter has had a positive impact on world wheat trade over the 1970 2005 period and if the use of a STE importer has had a negative impact. In addition, the marginal impact of the STE having monopoly status was tested. In all cases, the designation of STEs and their monopoly status is based on WTO notification documentations. To secure econometrically robust results, a modified conventional gravity model was chosen. This model was estimated using pooled OLS and fixed effects, the latter consisting of both time and country pair fixed effects. The data that was constructed was a large panel data set of bilateral wheat trade spanning from 1970 to 2005. The model was also tested on a number of subsamples representing countries at different stages of development and in different income categories to isolate potential differences in STEs objectives and impacts.<p>In virtually all models, the presence of a STE exporter had a strongly significant and positive effect on the value and volume of wheat exports from the country with the STE exporter. The fact that a STE had monopoly status did not have any additional impact on wheat trade. The impact of STE importers was insignificant.

Economic growth and development is intimately related to the decline of agriculture’s share of output and employment. This process of structural change has important implications for income and productivity differences between regions within a country or between countries themselves. Agriculture typically has low productivity relative to other sectors and this is particularly true in poor areas. So, as labour switches to nonagricultural activities or as agricultural productivity increases, poor agriculturallyintensive areas will benefit the most. In this thesis, I contribute to a recent and growing line of research and incorporate a separate role for agriculture, both into modeling frameworks and data analysis, to examine income and productivity differences. I first demonstrate that restrictions on trade in agricultural goods, which support inefficient domestic producers, inhibit structural change and lower productivity in poor countries. To do this, I incorporate multiple sectors, non-homothetic preferences, and labour mobility costs into an Eaton-Kortum trade model. With the model, I estimate productivity from trade data (avoiding problematic data for poor countries that typical estimates require) and perform a variety of counterfactual exercises. I find import barriers and labour mobility costs account for one-third of the aggregate labour productivity gap between rich and poor countries and for nearly half the gap in agriculture. Second, moving away from international income differences, I use a general equilibrium model of structural transformation to show a large labour migration cost between regions of the US magnifies the impact improved labour markets have on regional convergence. Finally, I estimate the influence of structural change on convergence between Canadian regions. I construct a unique dataset of census-division level wage and employment levels in both agriculture and nonagriculture between 1901 and 1981. I find convergence is primarily due to region-specific factors with structural change playing little role.

Economic growth and development is intimately related to the decline of agriculture’s share of output and employment. This process of structural change has important implications for income and productivity differences between regions within a country or between countries themselves. Agriculture typically has low productivity relative to other sectors and this is particularly true in poor areas. So, as labour switches to nonagricultural activities or as agricultural productivity increases, poor agriculturallyintensive areas will benefit the most. In this thesis, I contribute to a recent and growing line of research and incorporate a separate role for agriculture, both into modeling frameworks and data analysis, to examine income and productivity differences. I first demonstrate that restrictions on trade in agricultural goods, which support inefficient domestic producers, inhibit structural change and lower productivity in poor countries. To do this, I incorporate multiple sectors, non-homothetic preferences, and labour mobility costs into an Eaton-Kortum trade model. With the model, I estimate productivity from trade data (avoiding problematic data for poor countries that typical estimates require) and perform a variety of counterfactual exercises. I find import barriers and labour mobility costs account for one-third of the aggregate labour productivity gap between rich and poor countries and for nearly half the gap in agriculture. Second, moving away from international income differences, I use a general equilibrium model of structural transformation to show a large labour migration cost between regions of the US magnifies the impact improved labour markets have on regional convergence. Finally, I estimate the influence of structural change on convergence between Canadian regions. I construct a unique dataset of census-division level wage and employment levels in both agriculture and nonagriculture between 1901 and 1981. I find convergence is primarily due to region-specific factors with structural change playing little role.

Many researchers have contributed to the field of international purchasing; but there are no consistent findings to illustrate particular connections within the field. This particular research studies the ways that two Iranian producers of polymer piping systems handle international purchasing in current complex Iranian economic circumstances. By going beyond macroeconomic theories of international trade and using three-factor model of international industrial purchasing this particular study aims to reveal how international industrial purchasing is handled by Iranian producers of polymer piping systems under current Iranian economic and politic circumstances. A case study approach employing face-to-face semi-structured interview method is designed. A set of interview questionnaires was designed to gather empirical qualitative and quantitative data. A narrative analysis was then conducted to lead the discussions and to draw conclusions. The results of the study show that international purchasing in both firms is influenced by internal factors including attitudes and competence as well as external factors including market conditions and regulations. The levels to which the first three mentioned factors influence international purchasing varies between the studied firms; but regulations have similar effects on the ways the studied firms handle international purchasing. Also, the modified three-factor model is perfectly applicable to the studied cases under current circumstances of Iranian economy.

An outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease in Canada would result in the closing of borders to trade in meat and livestock between Canada and the US. The loss of export market access would result in losses to Canadian producers and negatively affect Canada’s reputation as a trading partner. Under a Regionalization Policy, trade could be allowed from disease-free regions of Canada during an outbreak. This would allow a limited amount of trade to continue and mitigate the losses to producers in uninfected areas. This thesis examined scenarios that involve various degrees of regionalization to determine the effects on producers, consumers and taxpayers. A partial- equilibrium model is used to determine the impact on economic welfare under each scenario and comparisons are made to help evaluate the relative outcomes of policies towards regionalization.

This dissertation investigates implementation problems in economic sanctions and how a state's concerns about policy implementation affect its decisions and the outcomes of sanctions. This study builds on the premise that sanctions are carried out by firms within a sanctioning state, not the state itself. First, using a game-theoretical model, I show that firms' non-compliance with sanction policies not only undermines the effectiveness of unilateral sanctions, but also has a counter-intuitive effect on a sanctioning state's decision to impose sanctions. The model suggests that a state is more likely to impose sanctions when it anticipates firms' non-compliance. A number of empirical implications are derived from the model and corroborated with data. Second, this study also investigates a sanctioning state's decision to sanction multilaterally or unilaterally, and how its expectations about the enforcement of sanctions influence this decision. When the enforcement of unilateral sanctions is expected to be difficult, the state is more likely to sanction multilaterally, but only when it has enough resources and the bureaucratic capability to help other states enforce their sanctions. The empirical evidence also buttresses these theoretical results. This study highlights the importance of incorporating expectations about enforcement into a full understanding of the sanctions processes. The conclusion is that states' ability to influence firms' decisions at home as well as abroad is a crucial determinant of whether they impose, how they design, and the effectiveness of sanctions.

Despite interest in the influence of religion on economic activity by early economists like Adam Smith, modern economists have done little research on the subject. In light of the apparent religious fervour in many parts of the global economy, economists' seeming lack of interest in studying how religious cultures enhance or retard the globalization of economic activity is especially surprising. In general, trade theories have given less weight towards the reason for trade explanation on demand side. As a contrary to H-O theory Linder had proposed a theoretically sound and empirically consistent trade theory with a new claim for the reasons why countries trade on the demand side. To fill this gap, I use international survey data on religiosity for a broad panel of countries trading with US to investigate the effects of church attendance and religious beliefs on trade. The beliefs are, in turn, the principal output of the religion sector, and the believer alignment to a specific denomination measures the inputs to this sector. Hence, I used an extended gravity model of international trade to control for a variety of factors that determine trade, and I used two regression methods, OLS and WLS, to exploit the model to its fullest. I find that the sharing of same religious cultures by people in different countries has a significantly positive influence on bilateral trade, all other things being equal. These results accord with a perspective in which religious beliefs influence individual traits that enhance trade and economic performance in general. And my attempt to magnify religion as a means to trade is only a derivation of Linder’s overlapping demand theory.

The purpose of this research was to empirically examine the impacts that the presence of a state trading enterprise (STE) has in the international wheat market. There are numerous types of STEs that function in different ways to achieve many different types of policy objectives which are often unique to a particular STE. Although the existence of a STE is justified by the countries involved using numerous policy rationales, the fear that they are used as a front for trade protectionism is a prevalent concern. One specific aspect of a STE that often brings this concern to the forefront is whether or not the STE has the exclusive privilege of monopoly status.<p>The empirical objective of this thesis was to determine specifically if the use of a STE exporter has had a positive impact on world wheat trade over the 1970 2005 period and if the use of a STE importer has had a negative impact. In addition, the marginal impact of the STE having monopoly status was tested. In all cases, the designation of STEs and their monopoly status is based on WTO notification documentations. To secure econometrically robust results, a modified conventional gravity model was chosen. This model was estimated using pooled OLS and fixed effects, the latter consisting of both time and country pair fixed effects. The data that was constructed was a large panel data set of bilateral wheat trade spanning from 1970 to 2005. The model was also tested on a number of subsamples representing countries at different stages of development and in different income categories to isolate potential differences in STEs objectives and impacts.<p>In virtually all models, the presence of a STE exporter had a strongly significant and positive effect on the value and volume of wheat exports from the country with the STE exporter. The fact that a STE had monopoly status did not have any additional impact on wheat trade. The impact of STE importers was insignificant.

<p>According to OECD statistics, products categorised as electronic machinery equipment (EME) has experienced the highest export growth in China from 1992-2003. Thus, the sec-tor encounters not only a great importance for Chinese export in absolute figures, its high growth during recent years may also imply a great importance for the future.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis was to compose an export demand equation for Chinese Elec-trical machinery equipment, examining how Relative prises, GDP in importing country, distance to importing country, and the importing countries FDI in China affects foreign demand in this sector. The empirical test indicates that the variables included in this analy-sis can be used to explain foreign demand for Chinese produced EME.</p><p>As in accordance to theory importers GDP and FDI was found to have a significant posi-tive affect on EME export, likewise distance was found to influence the EME export nega-tively. Unexpectedly, Relative price (Pc/Pw) seemed to have a positive effect on EME ex-port. This implausible finding may be caused by quality heterogeneity of products included in the EME sector and the large proportion of intermediate products incorporated in Chi-nese EME export.</p> / <p>Enligt statistik från OECD så har produkter klassificerade inom området ”utrustning för elektroniska maskiner” redovisat den högsta exporttillväxten i Kina under 1992-2003. Denna sektor är därför inte bara viktig för den kinesiska ekonomin i absolut tal utan den starka tillväxten under de senaste åren är även viktig för den framtida kinesiska exporten.</p><p>Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att formulera en efterfrågefunktion för produkter inom sektorn ”utrustning för elektroniska maskiner”. Uppsatsen undersöker hur relativa priser, importlandets BNP, geografiskt avstånd till importlandet samt hur importlandets direktin-vesteringar i Kina påverkar efterfrågan av produkter inom den valda sektorn. De utförda empiriska testerna bevisar att dessa variabler kan användas för att förklara efterfrågan av kinesiska produkter inom den valda sektorn.</p><p>Denna uppsats visar att en ökning av exportlandets BNP eller direkt investeringar i Kina påverkar exporten inom den valda sektor positivt. Det geografiska avståndet mellan Kina och importlandet redovisade en negativ påverkan av exporten av produkter inom den valda sektorn. Relativa priser (Pc/Pw) redovisade tydliga positiva effekter på exporten inom sek-torn. Detta något oväntade resultat orsakades sannolikt av heterogeniteten inom den valda sektorn samt den höga andel av intermediära produkter som inkluderas inom sektorn.</p>

Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf xxxi). Also available via the World Wide Web.