The aim of this thesis is to examine whether South Africa's recently promulgated Protection of Investment Act represents a viable alternative to the bilateral investment treaty regime. In undertaking this examination, the bilateral investment treaty regime which preceded the Protection of Investment Act was first reviewed and some of the typical clauses found in these treaties were examined. Pursuant to this examination, the Foresti arbitration, through which a group of Italian and Luxembourgish investors challenged South Africa's affirmative action measures in the mining industry on the basis of the bilateral investment treaties that South Africa had entered into, was then introduced. The author examined the claim made in Foresti, South Africa's response and the final award. The next Chapter then turned to the effects of the Foresti arbitration, which set in motion South Africa's review of the BITs it had entered into, and then the eventual termination of these BITs and replacement with the Protection of Investment Act. In answering the central question of this thesis, a clause by clause analysis of the Protection of Investment Act was conducted in order to determine whether that Act is able to satisfy the deficiencies highlighted in the BIT review pursuant to Foresti. In conducting this analysis, the author highlighted some notable omissions in the Protection of Investment Act. Through this review and comparison, it was concluded that the Protection of Investment Act fails as a viable alternative to the bilateral investment treaty regime for a number of reasons, and in particular for crystallising the flawed BIT regime through a legislative savings provision. A better alternative for South Africa would have been renegotiating historical BITs based on a Model BIT incorporating the necessary amendments to rectify the perceived BIT limitations as highlighted in South Africa's BIT review.

This minor-dissertation considers the issue of data protection coverage within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and its importance to the Internet Telecommunications (ICT) sector in the various states of SADC but also its importance in providing protection to individuals in a region where internet penetration is increasing at a rapid pace. SADC introduced the SADC Model Law with the assistance of the Support for Harmonisation of the ICT Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa (HIPSSA Project). This is meant to provide a model in terms of which states in SADC could introduce or improve their own data protection regimes. Nevertheless, this instrument has not been successful in changing data protection practices within SADC, with only one state introducing a draft Bill on the basis of the Model Law. Nonetheless, despite the apparent failure of the Model Law, there will still be a degree of harmonisation between the various data protection laws in the sub-region due to the influence of the European Union (EU)'s Data Protection Directive. The approach taken is a comparative study which first considers the data protection laws of Mauritius and South Africa which have the two largest ICT sectors in SADC, the Zimbabwean draft Bill on Data Protection which was based on the SADC Model Law, and the Model Law itself. The purpose of this analysis is to determine whether a level of harmonisation has been achieved in SADC, despite the failure of the Model Law. The next step was a comparative study between the Model Law and the European Union's Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and the General Data Protection Directive (GDPR) 2016/679. The purpose of this was to track the development of data protection law in the European Union due to the impact which these laws had on data protection globally and to show differences between data protection regimes in SADC and the European Union. The comparative study of laws in SADC illustrated that there is significant similarity between the laws considered, thereby proving that the Data Protection Directive played a more significant role in the harmonisation of data protection laws than the SADC Model Law. Nonetheless, the Model Law bared a significant resemblance to the other two existing data protection regimes. It also illustrated the weakness of the Model Law by demonstrating the lack of protection and shortcomings found in the Zimbabwean Bill based on the Model Law. The comparative study between the regimes in the EU and the Model Law illustrates disparities in the level of protection found in the Current European regime, the GDPR and in SADC. The GDPR is stricter than the Model Law and has extra-territorial application with the potential to apply in SADC. Further, the Model Law is based upon the Directive, and is, thus, outdated and weaker. The Model Law has, therefore, failed its stated goal of harmonising data protection laws in SADC yet there is still a degree of harmonisation due to the influence of the Data Protection Directive. The study showed the importance of having a strong data protection regime and also the shortcomings of existing regimes in SADC, when compared to the European Union.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2999-01-01

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-109).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

M.Comm. / The objective with this study was to analyse the South African import tax structure and by doing so to highlight the shortcomings of the system. Taxation is the main source of revenue for all levels of government. Import taxation as an income and fiscal policy instrument is used by government to protect local industries against foreign competition, to stimulate local industrial development and to protect the balance of payments against an uncontrolled flight of foreign exchange ...

My dissertation encompasses three different topics on empirical international trade and migration. The first chapter investigates the short run effects of regional trade agreements on trade costs. It is widely accepted that the reinforcement of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) aiming at trade costs reduction among trade partners requires time. This paper investigates the effects of RTAs on trade costs over time by using unique micro-price data. We confirm that having an RTA on average lowers trade costs significantly. Furthermore, data shows significant and negative effects of RTAs on trade costs over time. Specifically, besides the initial impact on trade costs, having an RTA continuously lower trade costs every year after the commencement of the RTA. The second chapter decomposes the overall effects of gravity variables on trade through three gravity channels: duties/tariffs (DC), transportation-costs (TC), and dyadic-preferences (PC). Compared to the existing literature, additional channel of PC is introduced and shown to dominate the other two channels, with adjacency contributing about 45 percent, distance about 32 percent, colony about 14 percent, free trade agreements about 7 percent, and language about 2 percent. The results imply that gravity variables mainly capture the effects of demand shifters rather than supply shifters (as implied by the existing literature). The third chapter utilizes an immigration inflow data set from OECD countries during the period of 1984 to 2015 to shed light on how institutional quality affects the immigration rate. With the analysis in the fixed-effects framework, we construct a set of country-time specific institutional quality indexes to examine their effects on the immigration rate. The paper shows that other than the network effects, GDP difference, and migration costs, institutional qualities in both destination and source countries matter when it comes to potential migration decisions. Specifically, better socioeconomic conditions in the destination countries, and worse foreign debt, budget balance, government stability, internal conflicts, and corruption conditions in the source countries increase the immigration inflow.

In order to investigate the phenomenon of the distribution of gains from international trade, Arghiri Emmanuel's ideas are firs t critically discussed, particularly in relation to the traditional Ricardian framework as applied to labor-surplus economics. It is found that Emmanuel's concept of unequal exchange, which has been termed non-equivalent exchange by Jan Otto Anderson, has certain theoretical drawbacks. In particular, it has been pointed out that the question involved is not one to prove that the poor countries are actually worse off through trade as suggested by Emmanuel. The question involved is rather one of redistribution of gains from trade as has been voiced in the search for a new international economic order by the members of some developing countries in the U.N. Such an approach leads to the adoption of the concept of a generalized asymmetric exchange as the measure of unequal exchange. This generalization has been achieved in terms of Leontief 's input output analysis. Such a measure coincides with the disjunctive exchange approach when the input-output coefficients are modified over time. The Leontief input-output analysis leads to an aggregation problem which has been solved by taking labor as the only primary factor of production - an approach standardized by Leontief himself. According to this measure, the extent of unequal exchange can be quite different from those obtained by the measures suggested by Emmanuel, Shanin and others. It has been pointed out that there is no a-priori reason to believe that a poor country necessarily gains less than its rich counterpart. Indeed, the test that has been made of the measure in the case of trade between Ecuador and the USA shows that it is Ecuador rather the U. S. which gains more from trade between them. The study also suggests some policy recommendations for reducing unequal exchange with special reference to labor-surplus economics.

<p>International trade is connecting the world’s frontiers.</p><p>Economic growth is being achieved by opening up to exterior markets and many countries are</p><p>nowadays unified by bilateral and multilateral agreements which enable the global market to</p><p>conduct a freer trade without restrictions. Trade negotiations are supervised by the World</p><p>Trade Organization whose intention is to eliminate the obstacles in trade between countries.</p><p>The liberalization process of a freer trade has however failed in certain sectors such as in the</p><p>agriculture. This sector is still highly protected in many countries and a concern in the</p><p>agricultural trade is that by having a high protectionism level in the global market it could</p><p>consequently lead to higher world prices and losses to developing countries that mainly work</p><p>in rural sectors and depend on the prices of their produce.</p><p>Peru is a developing country consisting of a large agricultural sector. More than half of the</p><p>inhabitants are small producers with economies of scale living in extreme poverty.</p><p>The country is today processing negotiations of a possible Free Trade Agreement with the</p><p>United States. The main concern of Peru entering the agreement is how the aperture of the</p><p>market is going to affect sensible unprotected sectors of small farmers. The sensitive produce</p><p>could be distortional on price and affect the farmers’ welfare because of the entrance of</p><p>subsidized produce from the American side.</p><p>The purpose of the study was to investigate the potential effects the Free Trade Agreement</p><p>between Peru and United States could have upon the Peruvian farmers in the sector of selfsufficiency,</p><p>producing any type of sensitive produce in relation to price and labour. I have</p><p>conducted the study from the farmers’ perspective.</p><p>The theoretical framework was divided in two parts to be able to cover the aspect of</p><p>international trade and moreover the national aspect involving the system of Peru.</p><p>The study was conducted interpreting a future happening and therefore the approach was the</p><p>hermeneutical using an abductive research method with a qualitative strategy which enabled</p><p>the observation to be conducted through interviews. The interviews were divided in two</p><p>different sectors. Four semi-structured telephone interviews with the administrative sector and</p><p>five structured interviews through an intermediary in the agricultural sector where performed.</p><p>My intention with the study was to interpret future happenings and not to generalize an</p><p>outcome.</p><p>Furthermore the analysis was divided in four main factors based on the empirical and</p><p>theoretical observations to be able to analyze each category more deeply in an entire context</p><p>of both external and internal factors using the theoretical framework to support the arguments</p><p>of my observation.</p><p>The main conclusions of the study were that the potential effects of the Peruvian farmers’ in</p><p>price and labour would not be depending solely on the price fall of the sensitive produce</p><p>entering the market but on the ability of Peru to build stability within the country</p><p>implementing internal factors lacking today. This is to prevent the external factors of</p><p>worsening the conditions of the farmers. Consequently depending on how the situation is</p><p>handled internally in the country there could be two possible outcomes, one negative effect</p><p>and one positive effect.</p>