Yes / This paper uses a new measure of international trade, i.e. the international trade potential index, to measure the welfare gains from trade across countries. The measure is based on the import shares of countries in their gross domestic products. It is observed that gains from international trade are low in prosperous economies, but they are larger in poorer economies. Then, the paper investigates the impact of the index of international trade potential on renewable energy consumption in the unbalanced panel dataset of 36 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries from 1966 to 2016. The novel evidence is that international trade potential is positively related to renewable energy consumption. It is also found that per capita income, per capita carbon dioxide emissions, and energy prices increase the demand for renewable energy. / The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Philosophy & Social Science Fund of Tianjin City, China (Award #: TJYJ20-012).

This thesis seeks to explain the outcomes of trade negotiations between the European Union (EU) and seventy-six of the world’s smallest developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific (ACP). Puzzlingly, in spite of its vastly greater economic size, the EU was, for the main, unable to realise its objective of concluding six broad and deep free trade agreements with these countries. Deploying first historical institutional analysis then statistical modelling and finally by scrutinising a wealth of primary documents and transcripts of interviews with negotiators, the thesis reveals three factors that influenced outcomes. First, coercive pressure applied by the EU on countries dependent on EU for trade preferences and aid. Second, tactics within the negotiating process, with some ACP countries and regions manoeuvring more effectively than others. Third, differences in the underlying preferences of ACP governments, with most opposing major aspects of the EU’s proposals, but a minority embracing the EPA approach. Probing the underlying reasons, the thesis finds that, contrary to the prevailing literature, lobbying by domestic economic interest groups only provides part of the answer – the analytical and ideational processes within ACP government institutions also exerted an influence. The analysis shows that structural factors, particularly the depth of economic and political dependence on the larger state, establish the range of likely outcomes from a given negotiation. However the preferences of small states and the way in which they interact strategically with the larger state can definitively shape the final outcome. In particular, small states can exercise a degree of resistance and blocking power that is often underestimated. It also sheds light on the formation of trade preferences in small developing countries and shows that in addition to lobbying by external groups, information and ideas within government bureaucracies appear to play an important role.

The Multifibre Agreement ("MFA") regulated textile trade until 1 January 2005. It was predominantly focused on curtailing textile exports from developing countries, like South Africa and China. With the end of the MFA, a textile crisis occurred in South Africa due to the domination of the domestic market by more affordable Chinese textile products. This case study is applied to illustrate the inadequacy of domestic legislation to provide for the resolution of an international trade dispute that affects an industry. No legislation refers to the resolution of the trade dispute by entering into a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU"), or recourse to the neutral dispute settlement body of the World Trade Organisation ("WTO"). Due to the absence of legislation that directly addresses either forum, all the power is vested• in the government to determine the appropriate course of action. Applications brought by textile industry representative bodies like TEXFED, CLOTRADE and SACTWU were inadequately investigated due to the limited powers of the independent investigative body, ITAC, and were ultimately abandoned. The government entered into a MOU with the Chinese government and in doing so violated international agreements, rights and obligations. An analysis of the inadequacy of the MOU that was entered into and the suitability of the WTO as dispute settlement body is conducted. It is concluded that the current legislation is inadequate in that it doesn't provide for recourse to the WTO and in that it doesn't clearly set out the obligations on government and the independent powers of an independent body. / LLM (Import and Export Law), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:29:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Thiago Vinicius Sayeg Egydio De Oliveira.pdf: 558780 bytes, checksum: 3ca998c4582797a24e940ce4f7277d82 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-10-05 / This thesis has as its main objective the clarification of the destination of revenues obtained by the Federal Government imposed as consequence of international trade disputes as well as the discussion on whether the delivery of any such revenues to the industries could be considered as an illegal subsidy by the other participants of the international trade regime / Esta tese tem como principal objetivo a clarificação do destino das receitas obtidas pelo Governo Federal instituída como conseqüência de conflitos comerciais internacionais, bem como a discussão sobre se a entrega de qualquer dessas receitas para as indústrias poderia ser considerada uma subvenção ilegal pelos outros participantes do regime de comércio internacional

Nas últimas décadas, a importância da normalização técnica para comércio internacional aumentou consideravelmente. Segundo dados da OCDE, estima-se que um total de 80% do comércio global na atualidade seja afetado por normas e regulamentos técnicos. Esse cenário justifica a preocupação dos Membros da OMC em incentivar o estabelecimento de padrões tecnológicos comuns nos diversos países, como um instrumento para evitar o incremento das barreiras técnicas e promover a facilitação do fluxo internacional de bens, serviços, investimentos e tecnologias. Contudo, o crescente envolvimento de direitos de propriedade intelectual nas normas técnicas internacionais tem preocupado algumas nações, principalmente em decorrência dos elevados custos, tensões e conflitos que resultam dessa situação, impactando de forma negativa o comércio. Sob a perspectiva do ordenamento jurídico do comércio internacional, o conflito revela-se no conjunto de obrigações que os Membros assumem no âmbito da OMC. Se os países devem obrigatoriamente utilizar como base as normas técnicas internacionais para estabelecer suas normas e regulamentos domésticos, e aquelas se encontram revestidas de direitos exclusivos privados, sua efetiva aplicação no plano doméstico depende da licença dos titulares desses direitos, nos termos e condições por eles impostos. No entanto, uma vez que eles não estejam dispostos a conceder licenças em termos razoáveis e não discriminatórios, ou se recusem a conferir a autorização, os países encontram dificuldades ou, ainda, ficam impossibilitados de implementar de forma plena as obrigações assumidas na OMC. A partir dessa hipótese, o presente estudo tem como objetivo analisar como se encontra regulada a relação entre a normalização técnica e a propriedade intelectual no ordenamento jurídico do comércio internacional. Esta tese confirma que as tensões inerentes à relação entre propriedade intelectual e normalização técnica alimentam um conflito sob a perspectiva do ordenamento jurídico do comércio internacional, que não possui regras específicas para regular a questão. Este conflito se traduz na dificuldade que os países têm na implementação plena das obrigações assumidas na OMC. Para a mitigação dos problemas que emergem desse conflito, observa-se que se destacam duas tendências seguidas pelos Membros da Organização. Uma delas consiste em incrementar as flexibilidades do Acordo TRIPS, como se verifica nos Estados Unidos, União Europeia e Índia. Outra opção observada é o afastamento das normas técnicas internacionais em prol da adoção de normas e regulamentos técnicos domésticos baseados em tecnologias nacionais ou não proprietárias com fundamento nas flexibilidades dos acordos TBT, SPS e GATS. Casos nesse sentido são identificados em países como China. Em certas circunstâncias, a preferência pelo estabelecimento de normas e regulamentos técnicos baseados essencialmente em tecnologias nacionais protegidas por direitos de propriedade intelectual pode robustecer as barreiras técnicas ao comércio. Diante disso, com o propósito de assegurar a efetividade dos acordos multilaterais de comércio e garantir segurança jurídica, entende-se necessário a adoção de medidas claras e adequadas, que busquem eliminar ou reduzir as tensões e conflito, e garantir a previsibilidade do Sistema Multilateral de Comércio. Importa, ainda, que tais medidas sejam estabelecidas de forma a facilitar o comércio internacional e promover a concorrência leal, a inovação, a transferência da tecnologia e o desenvolvimento das nações. / In recents decades, the importance of technical standards for international trade has increased substantially. According to OECD data, it is estimated that around 80% of global trade is affected by standards and technical regulations. This scenario justifies the concerns of WTO Members to encourage the settlement of common technological standards in different countries, as a tool to prevent the rise of technical barriers and promote the facilitation of the international flow of goods, services, investment and technology. However, the increasing involvement of intellectual property rights in international standards has concerned some nations, mainly due to high costs, tensions and conflicts that result from this situation, adversely impacting trade. From the perspective of international trade law, the conflict is revealed in the set of obligations that States assumed in the WTO. If countries must use international standards as a basis to establish technical regulations and norms, and those are covered by private exclusive rights, its effective implementation at the domestic level depends on the approval of rights holders, according the terms and conditions imposed by them. However, since the rights holders are not willing to grant licenses on reasonable and non-discriminatory conditions, or refuse to grant the licenses, countries may find difficult or even remain unable to fully implement their obligations in the WTO. From this hypothesis, this study aims to analyze as it is regulated the relationship between technical standards and intellectual property in international trade law. This thesis confirms that the tensions inherent in the relationship between intellectual property and technical standardization feed a conflict from the perspective of international trade law, which has no specific rules to regulate this question. This conflict is reflected in the difficulty countries have in the full implementation of the obligations assumed in WTO. In order to mitigate the problems that emerge from this conflict, it is observed that there are two trends followed by the Members of the Organization. One is to enhance the flexibilities of the TRIPS Agreement, as is the case in the United States, European Union and India. Another option is the deviation of international standards in favor of domestic standards and technical regulations based on national or non proprietary technologies founded on the flexibilities of TBT, SPS and GATS. Such cases are identified in countries like China. In some circumstances, the preference for the creation of standards and technical regulations based mainly on national technologies protected by intellectual property rights can strengthen the technical barriers to trade. Therefore, in order to ensure the effectiveness of multilateral trade agreements, it is necessary to establish clear and appropriate measures, which seek to eliminate or reduce tensions and conflict, and ensure the predictability of the multilateral trading system. It is also important that such measures are established to facilitate international trade and promote fair competition, innovation, technology transfer and development of nations.

The Multifibre Agreement ("MFA") regulated textile trade until 1 January 2005. It was predominantly focused on curtailing textile exports from developing countries, like South Africa and China. With the end of the MFA, a textile crisis occurred in South Africa due to the domination of the domestic market by more affordable Chinese textile products. This case study is applied to illustrate the inadequacy of domestic legislation to provide for the resolution of an international trade dispute that affects an industry. No legislation refers to the resolution of the trade dispute by entering into a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU"), or recourse to the neutral dispute settlement body of the World Trade Organisation ("WTO"). Due to the absence of legislation that directly addresses either forum, all the power is vested• in the government to determine the appropriate course of action. Applications brought by textile industry representative bodies like TEXFED, CLOTRADE and SACTWU were inadequately investigated due to the limited powers of the independent investigative body, ITAC, and were ultimately abandoned. The government entered into a MOU with the Chinese government and in doing so violated international agreements, rights and obligations. An analysis of the inadequacy of the MOU that was entered into and the suitability of the WTO as dispute settlement body is conducted. It is concluded that the current legislation is inadequate in that it doesn't provide for recourse to the WTO and in that it doesn't clearly set out the obligations on government and the independent powers of an independent body. / LLM (Import and Export Law), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

For my thesis, I analyze effects of recent political developments on the development of Mexico’s agriculture sector. In 1994, Mexico joined NAFTA, sparking major change in many of Mexico’s major industries as a result of lifted trade restrictions. In addition to joining NAFTA in 1994, Mexico has implemented domestic programs over the last thirty years with the goal of expanding its agriculture sector. While some of the effects of Mexico’s domestic policies are concurrent with the effects of NAFTA, I separately evaluate the effects of NAFTA and these domestic agriculture policies. Specifically, I analyze the effects of these political developments on Mexico’s agricultural sector by evaluating changes to the trade balances of four major categories of commodities: vegetables, fruits & nuts, dairy and cereals. I compare the changes to Mexico’s trade position with the changes to trade positions of a selected group of six countries, which I call the “comparison countries.” The trade data covers the time period of 1975-2012, enabling the analysis to adequately evaluate the changes to trade “before and after” these political developments intervened. I find that NAFTA had mixed effects on Mexico’s agriculture sector’s development. Some commodities experience growth and increased exports to NAFTA countries, suggesting that NAFTA effected these industries positively. On the other hand, I find that NAFTA marred the development of other commodities as a result of domestic policies in the US distorting trade. Finally, I find that the effects of Mexico’s domestic programs either aided in the growth of some commodities or simply enabled producers to remain in the competitive NAFTA markets.

Thematic Paper (M.Sc. (Environmental Management))--Mahidol University, 2005.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Boston College, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-242).

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No. of bitstreams: 1 ANDRIOTTA_Amanda_2015.pdf: 1662270 bytes, checksum: eaa5bc450b58729fcfe628d6d499277d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-06-12 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / During the most recent decades the Brazilian foreign trade has shown significant changes regarding its pattern of trade specialization. These changes suggest that the country is undergoing into a process of exports reprimarization, caused mainly by the increase of the Chinese demand for commodities. The increase of the share of commodities in trade transactions between Brazil and the rest of the world has happened at the same time that manufactures have lost importance in the nations’ total trade. The new composition of the Brazilian foreign trade transactions indicates the country is following a new pattern in the international market. In addition, not only the country’s exports composition has changed over the last years, but we can also verify changes in the main exports destinations rank list. In this paper, our goal is to investigate the dynamics of changes in the Brazilian foreign trade transactions, focusing on exports, during the period of 1997 and 2003. We divided our analysis in different sectors, destination markets, and different periods to have a better understand of how changes happened. Our main hypothesis is that the reveled comparative advantages in international trade have led the country to the reprimarization process of its exports. Moreover, fewer sectors have shown high competitive levels over the last years, indicating a poor dynamics of Brazilian exports. In order to test our hypothesis, we first calculated revealed symmetric comparative advantages indexes, and then used Markov chains to calculate their probability distributions in different periods. We combined the two methodologies to identify the sectors and groups of technology where the country has higher competitiveness. We could also test for changes in exports composition, identifying which were the sectors and technology groups with higher trade competitiveness, in each period. Our results show that Brazil has been using its comparative advantages in the international trade, and its exports are becoming more dependent of commodities, since this is the group of products with higher revealed comparative advantages index. We also found a general loss of competitiveness in the non-commodity sectors during the analyzed period, which clearly shows that the country is facing a process of export reprimarization. The analysis of trade regarding different groups of countries shows that, even though with different intensities, commodity exports are becoming more relevant to all exports destinations (BRICS, European Union, MERCOSUL, and NAFTA), and it has happened more intensively during the third reporting period (2007- 2011). In addition, we also found that there is an indication that, in the future (ceteris paribus), there will be a possible convergence of exports in sectors with lower levels of comparative advantage. Our findings indicate that Brazil has been losing competitiveness in international trade, even with those products that the country has more comparative advantages in trade. / O comércio exterior brasileiro tem apresentado importantes modificações no que tange seu padrão de especialização comercial, sugerindo que o país vem passando por um processo de reprimarização de sua pauta exportadora, ocasionado, principalmente, pelo aumento da demanda chinesa por produtos básicos. Uma vez que os produtos primários têm aumentado a sua participação nas transações comerciais do Brasil com o restante do mundo, enquanto os produtos manufaturados vêm diminuindo relativamente a sua relevância, há um indicativo de que está se desenhando uma nova inserção da economia brasileira no comércio mundial. Entretanto, não só a composição das exportações brasileiras apresenta modificação ao longo dos anos, mas também se observa um reordenamento dos países figurando-se entre os principais mercados de destino das exportações brasileiras. Diante disso, esse trabalho tem como objetivo investigar a dinâmica das transformações no padrão comercial brasileiro no mercado internacional, sobretudo, das exportações, no período de 1997 a 2013. Acredita-se que a divisão da análise em setores, mercados e subperíodos de anos é capaz de proporcionar um melhor entendimento das relações comerciais brasileiras no comércio mundial nos últimos anos. Ademais, supõe-se que o aproveitamento das vantagens comparativas tem feito o país passar por um processo de reprimarização das exportações, porém poucos setores têm conseguido se figurar em níveis elevados de competitividade, mostrando baixo dinamismo das exportações brasileiras. Para verificar tais proposições, o trabalho faz uso da combinação de duas metodologias: cálculo do índice de vantagem comparativa revelada normalizado e a aplicação das cadeias de Markov, utilizando as matrizes de distribuição de probabilidades. A partir de tais métodos é possível verificar os setores e grupos tecnológicos que o país apresenta competitividade no comércio. Em adicional, é possível analisar as transformações de tais vantagens em níveis de competitividade, identificando a direção com que as mudanças no padrão competitivo está se desenhando. Assim, os resultados demonstram que o Brasil vem tornando a sua pauta de exportações cada vez mais intensiva nos produtos primários, ocorrendo um aproveitamento das vantagens comparativas do país, uma vez que esses produtos são os que possuem índice de vantagem competitiva mais elevado. Entretanto, esse movimento de reprimarização é acompanhado por uma perda de competitividade dos demais grupos e setores que não são dessa classificação. Em relação aos blocos econômicos selecionados, observa-se que, mesmo com intensidades diferentes, as exportações de produtos básicos estão se tornando cada vez mais relevantes nos destinos avaliados, sobretudo, tal processo tem ocorrido de forma mais intensa no terceiro período analisado (2007-2011). Além disso, todas as matrizes de distribuição limite desse período demonstram uma convergência dos setores para menores níveis de vantagem comparativa, indicando que o Brasil vem perdendo competitividade no comércio internacional, mesmo naqueles produtos que o país apresenta maior vantagem comparativa, mostrando uma perda de dinamismo das exportações brasileiras.