The aim of this study was to evaluate the export promotion services of Eritrea according to the theories presented in chapter two and come up with recommendation suitable to the Eritrean case. It was found that national export promotion policies would not provide any benefits or lead to increased exports if they are not supported by export promotion policies and programmes at the industrial and enterprise level. Although the Eritrea's national economic policy states 'it is aimed for export-oriented growth', nothing has been done to upgrade the competitiveness of SMEs or increase their exports. The main reason is the unavailability of the export promotion programmes and policies at the industrial and enterprise level. The elements of export promotion services include information provision and export finance assistance. Export information is crucial to the growth of exports of SMEs. Export finance is aimed at providing the financial and insurance needs of exporting firms. The main goals of Export Promotion are to contribute to overall economic improvement of a country, and the subsequent increase for the standard of living of the population. This is achieved through increased export of the country's products. SMEs in Eritrea are facing many interrelated problems. Given their great contribution to the economy and the opportunities available in the world market, motivating them through export promotion and other services could be the best way to make them competitive. In this regard the following three points are recommended as the best ways of enhancing the competitiveness of SMEs. First the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) should have to have a general policy framework as well as programs specifically designed for SMEs development, which could serve as a general framework and a reference for policies and development efforts targeting SMEs. Second the MTI should establish and implement a strategy for SMEs export promotion aimed at increasing the SMEs export through the provision of necessary services. Finally firms themselves should also develop more responsive and proactive management, skilled labour, advanced equipment, and efficient production and marketing plans in order to withstand competition at home and abroad. / Thesis (MBA)- University of Kwazulu-Natal, 2005.

The World Customs Organisation (WCO) predicted that the 21st century will bring with it major challenges. The former Commissioner of the United States Customs, Raymond, W, Kelly also remarked in the symposium for the America's 2000, a common dilemma for customs will be how to manage the "exploding volumes", of trade with declining or static resources. Globalisation has brought with it an influx of international trade. Production facilities being spread over different continents creating one virtual market place. This has brought about the need for increased Trade facilitation. Customs being the major role player in the supply chain process needs to provide efficient and effective release of cargo while at the same time ensure that it eradicates smuggling and protects its fiscal base. This responsibility that customs authorities are placed in makes it impossible to conduct high levels of physical interventions, as a result this has created a need for the use of a more strategic tool. The Risk Management Model is such a tool which if used effectively can provide value to Customs as well as the client's, it serves. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.

The study is about the activities of public entities in international trade, more precisely, about international government procurement. The law of government contracts, in international and municipal law, seeks to balance the stability of contractual relations between the parties and the mutability of the contract which flows from a recognition of the primacy of the public interest. The precise balance struck varies from one legal system to another. Part One of the work looks, firstly, at the recognition, immunities and capacity of public entities in international commercial transactions. Secondly, it treats the conflict of laws rules applicable before national and arbitral jurisdictions. Thirdly, it explores the various possibilities of applicable law, namely the law of the contracting State, the lex mercatoria and public international law. Part Two examines, from a comparative perspective, the notions of "public body", "public contract" and "contrat administratif" in Ameircan, English and French law. The third part explores two main themes. Firstly, the process of procurement in national law, European law, and under the Agreement on Government Procurement; and secondly, the question of the stability of the contractual obligations which can be disturbed by unilateral interventions of the contracting public entity and by external supervening events.

The implementation of the 1994 GATT accords on technical barriers to trade led to an unprecedented level of trade liberalisation. Most countries have increased their economic interdependence. The role delegated to multinational enterprises has been considerably extended. It is suggested that they could become subjects of international law. Their participation in standardisation, eco-labelling and consultation programs increased. They also adopted private codes of conduct and have modernised the way they dialogue with regulatory authorities. One of the impacts of the Uruguay Round Agreements is a subtle reorganisation of forces within national economies. Tremendous responsibilities are progressively undertaken by private entities in domains where the state used to regulate unilaterally. The shift of power from public entities to private ones is discreet but has effects on all traditional sources of law. New forms of regulation on multinational enterprises need to be created. One of the main sources of innovation is a negotiated self-regulation

Many of the 10 Central European candidate member countries for EU accession entered into the transition period with strongly undervalued exchange rates to stimulate exports and protect domestic industries. However, this policy was not maintained. During 1993-1995 real currency appreciation increased competitive pressure by foreign firms. To protect domestic firms governments applied high third country tariffs, temporary import taxes, and numerous administrative barriers to trade. As countervailing pressure by the EU and the USA increased and current account deficits soared in 1996 and 1997, the CE-10 more and more brought exchange rate policies in line with the changes in purchasing power parity. However, petty protection and harassment of importers prevails. (author's abstract) / Series: EI Working Papers / Europainstitut

This thesis extends the literature on trade-linked international environmental policy by quantifying the effects of collective taxes on polluting intermediate inputs under varying trade, market structure and labour market assumptions. Using a CGE model augmented to include emissions from intermediate inputs, I simulate the effects of coordinated and harmonized environmental taxes on output, trade, and market structure. The main objectives are to ascertain whether free trade improves regulatory policy outcomes, and to demonstrate how market structure and the relative size of trading partners affect policy responses. To this end, I consider three cases: (a) asymmetric regions competing under perfect competition (b) asymmetric regions competing under imperfect competition and (c) symmetric regions competing under imperfect competition. Using Canada-EU and NAFTA-EU trade to represent asymmetric and symmetric trade ties, the results reveal the following: When regions are asymmetric, free trade unambiguously improves regulatory outcomes for the EU, but yields mixed results for Canada. In addition, regulatory costs are lower when trading partners are symmetric. However, free trade can result in perverse outcomes. For asymmetric regions, output and market structure changes are stronger under imperfect competition, and in the presence of real wage unemployment. Results also suggest that aggregate trade flows are not very sensitive to environmental taxes but are sensitive to changes in border taxes. Finally, welfare effects do not follow a predictable pattern because they partly depend on market structure changes.

This thesis examines the spillover effects of armed conflicts on trade in neighboring countries. The empirical results, obtained by using a rich dataset on trade and conflict for 168 countries during the 1950-2011 period, and thus including the onset of the Arab Spring, show that conflict disrupts the trade of neighboring countries, even though they are not directly involved in any conflict. These spillovers are strongest one year after the onset of the conflict, thus suggesting that the negative effects of regional war on trade are lagged rather than contemporaneous, while they also increase the more violent the conflict is. When conflict in secondary neighbors, defined as countries that are not directly contiguous yet closer than 250km to any country in the trading-pair, is introduced the results are unclear as a majority of the estimates are insignificant and not robust to different model specifications.

The thesis considers the effect of world trade or commodity price volatility on small open economies. It extends the existing literature by including non-tradeable goods and many volatile prices in the model together with consideration of the welfare effects of participation in international risk or capital markets. In addition the thesis systematically addresses the implications of price volatility for resource allocation and presents empirical estimates of the costs and benefits of volatility for a large sample of countries. The most important theme in the analysis is the extent of output flexibility in the face of variable prices. It is shown that price volatility gives rise to high returns to flexibility which suggests that commodity exporting countries should regard price volatility as an opportunity to benefit by being flexible as well as a source of welfare costs. The empirical estimates show that many developing countries have had an inflexible response to changes in world prices over the period 1958-90. Flexibility may improve with the abolition of producer price stabilisation in many countries in the 1980s, a policy reform that is predicted to yield large benefits. These will increase if attempts are also made to improve the functioning of domestic risk and capital markets together with enhanced access to their international equivalents.

Intellectual property protection (IPP) attained its importance in recent years because of the steady increase of intellectual property-endowed goods and technology in global trade. Technology producers, among them multilateral pharmaceutical companies (MPCs) felt that the Paris Convention (the Convention) was not adequate in dealing with trade related issues, and that an agreement was needed to integrate the subject of IPP; especially patent protection for pharmaceuticals, into the broader context of global trade law. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPS Agreement) concluded in the Uruguay Round in 1994 brought IPP into the global trading system. The patent system contained in the Agreement reflects to a large extent MPCs' proposal for a strengthened patent system which paves the way to ensure market access and equal competition opportunity in their endeavour to expand global operation. The objective of the global trading system is to liberalise trade, achieved by securing commitments of market access and equal competition opportunity through the application of the principles of most-favoured-nation treatment, national treatment and reciprocity, reinforced by domestic competition policy to ensure efficient functioning of markets.However, in regard to patent protection for pharmaceuticals, the exercise of the exclusive marketing rights conferred by patent protection has trade restricting effect because competition is excluded during the patent term. This trade restricting effect does not compliment the objective of the global trading system nor promote competition. But the TRIPS Agreement does not cover a negotiated result on securing the recognition in domestic competition policy of the exclusive marketing rights conferred by patent protection, especially when domestic competition policy is designed to compliment microeconomic policy such as health care cost control. The implementation of international exhaustion to allow parallel importation of patented products during the term of patent is an example in point. It is an issue the TRIPS Agreement does not address and is excluded from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) dispute settlement mechanism. It is a legal issue because the disparity among national competition policy will cause trade distortions. It is political because the issue touches upon nations' regulatory autonomy in designing their competition policy to compliment other government policies. It also has economic implications in that countries might wish to rely on parallel importation as a mechanism to bring down prices of patent products. A complex issue as such requires- a multilateral solution enshrined in a legally binding agreement. In the absence of such an agreement, patent system under the TRIPS Agreement will be inadequate and ineffective because it will become inoperable and nations will incline to retrieve to unilateral actions for the resolution of grievances.

The socio-economic development of many developing countries depends heavily on the flow of foreign capital brought about by multinational enterprises' (MNE's) activities. However, there is evidence that the actual benefits derived by host countries from these enterprises are often less than expected. Accordingly, this clearly supports the need for an effective government control framework to increase the benefits of these foreign enterprises to the host country. This study therefore examines, both theoretically and empirically, the types of controls operated at present, with a view to establishing an appropriate framework for future control. A host government control framework consists basically of two complementary and integrated control processes: an entry control process to ensure that only those foreign enterprises which will be of benefit to the national economy are approved; and an operational control process to check that the project's operations are carried out in accordance with approved plans. In practice, the control mechanism focuses on the role of local accounting and reporting systems, and the role of the government auditor rather than other government bodies responsible for applying the control process. Egypt has been selected as the focus for the study, since many MNEs operate there under the open door economic policy, and it is believed that the many incentives given to attract foreign investment have allowed MNEs to gain greater benefits than they give to the country. Squibb Egypt, a foreign subsidiary in the pharmaceutical sector, is taken as a case study, in view of the importance of the sector to the Egyptian economy, and its increasing domination by foreign enterprises. Data have been collected through interviews from government departments and agencies dealing with MNEs in Egypt and Squibb Egypt. The result of the case study has indicated that Squibb Egypt has made only a modest contribution to the economy. This deficiency is attributable to the lack of the control system currently operated by the Egyptian government over MNEs. This provides a strong case for arguing that the adoption of a sound government control system is essential to alleviate many of the problems and deficiencies raised in this study, and to meet both national objectives and those of foreign enterprises.The research is divided into three main parts. The first, containing two chapters, examines the general relationship between a host government and the MNE, and describes a control framework model which could alleviate the problems arising from MNE entry and operations within a host country.Part two, which also contains two chapters, presents an overview of foreign investment in Egypt from 1952-1987, reviewing the open door policy and appraising its impact on the economy, and the control system currently operated by the Egyptian government.The empirical research is presented in the six chapters of part three, which examines the development of Squibb and the controls exercised over it, and evaluates the company's financial performance and its contribution to the Egyptian economy. Finally, recommendations are made to improve the evaluation and control over MNEs by host governments, with a view to maximising the benefits obtained from them.