This work focuses on globalization, more closely on the economic aspects of this process. Small countries, especially developing ones are in the spotlight, as they face unique challenges that have been addressed by the international community for decades at least. The success rate of the intervention is very questionable and leaves room for improvement, which may be a platform to elevate millions out of poverty, solve crippling problems, provide access to technology and improve the global economic system. The uniting hypothesis is that that small developing nations are functioning in a hostile environment when it comes to trade, intellectual property protection and debt, which makes it extremely difficult for them to globalize competitively. Economic history, trade and technology are the main filters of this research. Conventional economic theory like market fundamentalism, and international trade theories will be discussed. A holistic literature review, will try to depict the many sides of the argument. The data used will be from the World Competitiveness Report, World Bank's World Development Indicators, other World Bank data, apropriatiate statistical offices. A case study is implemented to conclude the thesis and in this case to evaluate the hypothesis as only partly true, since small...

This thesis analyzes the trade liberalization implemented in the form of FTA between Peru and USA in 2009 and its effect on the welfare of different clusters of individuals. In the ambient of economy with high income inequities it evaluates the liberalization separately for different income-level samples. The research is based on the comparison of groups of individuals occupied in sectors that were already liberalized by other market opening tools before 2009 and groups recently affected by the FTA. The analysis is than accomplished on the household survey panel data covering the period between 2007 and 2010. The findings suggest the trade liberalization positively affected not only the wealthier population but also the poor, both from the category of individuals working in sectors producing for domestic consumption. The positive effect on export-oriented producers hasn't been approved.

The importance of international trade cannot be neglected as it represents an important channel of wealth creation in the actual globalised world. Thus, the present writer aims to identify how the commercial flows have changed after the adoption of Euro and once the financial crisis has burst. Furthermore the main factors that influence trade are researched by using the gravitational econometric model and employing panel data for 14 EU member countries. The results show that the intensity of commercial exchanges are highly influenced by the level of development (GDP) of the country and the amount of FDI that are attracted, while the use of a common currency appears to be not too significant. At the same time, indicators are more sensible during the crisis period than the stable one, hence even small changes in independent variables can lead to higher decrease in trade. Key words: European trade, liberalization, competitiveness, financial crisis, contagion, Euro, gravitational model.

Agriculture in the Law of World Trade Organization Regulation on international agricultural trade is one of the most sensitive fields of international trade regulation by the agreements of the WTO. The current law is contained in the Agreement on Agriculture and it is the first regulation of the foreign trade in agricultural products in the WTO scheme. The purpose of this thesis is to clarify the important aspects of the current law. The thesis also addresses the context in which the Agreement on Agriculture takes effect, especially from the viewpoint of its influence on developing countries. Various chapters also briefly deal with the possible content of the future Agreement on Agriculture according to the most recent results of the Doha development round negotiations. The thesis is divided into seven chapters. The introductory chapter is dedicated to the beginnings of international agricultural trade regulation and to the negotiations of the Uruguay round that resulted in the establishment of the World Trade Organization and in the conclusion of the Agreement on Agriculture. The second chapter analyzes general provisions of the Agreement on Agriculture and the relations of the Agreement with other agreements that form the basis of the World Trade Organization. The third chapter deals with the...

La sécurité alimentaire définie comme l’accès à tous à une nourriture saine et suffisante, comporte quatre dimensions : les disponibilités, l’accessibilité, l’utilisation et la stabilité. Soumis à l’ajustement structurel depuis la fin des années 1980, les pays en développement (PED) ont procédé à une libéralisation agricole et à une ouverture commerciale, tandis que les pays développés maintiennent leur protectionnisme agricole. Le premier objectif de la thèse est d’analyser les méfaits d’une libéralisation agricole mal menée et inadaptée à travers les bilans des réformes agricoles au Sénégal et de la crise alimentaire de 2008. Les causes profondes de cette crise sont la financiarisation des marchés agricoles, leur dérégulation, et l’inefficacité des politiques agricoles et alimentaires dans les PED. La sécurité alimentaire est un but affiché par tous les pays mais faudrait-il être en mesure de la quantifier? Notre seconde ambition est de construire un indice synthétique de sécurité alimentaire grâce à une analyse en composante principale sur un échantillon de 125 pays en 2005 et 2009. Le résultat principal est que le score des pays développés s’est amélioré durant cette période, alors que celui des pays à faible revenu et à déficit vivrier s’est dégradé. Ainsi, les inégalités alimentaires entre les pays développés et ceux pauvres se sont accrues. Une classification hiérarchique ascendante par la méthode de Ward a permis de distinguer quatre situations alimentaires : la satiété, la sécurité, l’équilibre, et l’insécurité alimentaire. Elle a montré que la dépendance aux importations et les prix alimentaires avaient plus d’impact sur l’insécurité alimentaire que les revenus. / Defined as access to all a healthy and sufficient food, food security has four components: availability, access, utilization and stability. Subjected to structural adjustment since the late 1980s, developing countries (DCs) have conducted an agricultural liberalization and trade opening, while developed countries maintain their agricultural protectionism (domestic support and export subsidies). The first objective is to analyze the misdeeds of agricultural liberalization poorly conducted and inadequate through the agricultural reforms in Senegal and the 2008 food crisis. The root causes of this crisis reside more in the financialization of agricultural markets, the deregulation and inefficient agricultural and food policies in developing countries. Food security is a stated goal for all countries, but would it be able to quantify it? Indeed, it was conceptualized but its multidimensional nature made it difficult to quantify. Our second goal is to build a composite indicator of food security through a principal component analysis (PCA) on a sample of 125 countries in 2005 and 2009. The main result is that the score of the developed countries has improved during this period, while that of low-income food deficit deteriorated. We can deduce that due to food crisis, food inequalities between developed and poor countries have increased. In addition, a hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) with Ward's method was also performed and showed four different food situations in our sample: food satiety, food security, food balance, food insecurity. It also highlighted the fact that the dependence on food imports and food prices had more impact on food insecurity as income.

In connection with the process of globalization, the importance of international trade increases not only as means of gaining welfare but as a way to solve problems. The World Trade Organization (WTO) claimed this approach in 2001 through a new trade negotiation round, the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). Within DDA the WTO pledged to improve the conditions of participation of the developing countries in the multilateral trading system. Not after nine years of negotiation the round is heading to its conclusion and questions concerning the fulfilment of the development aspect are emerging. The presented thesis aims to evaluate the success of the integration of developing countries into the multilateral trading system and how the WTO contributes to it.

Countries in southern Africa have been implementing economic liberalisation policies for over two decades, with the aim of reversing years of economic decline. This process of economic liberalisation has been largely been influenced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank policy prescription. While the developed world has been piling pressure on countries in the Sub-Saharan region to integrate their national economies into the global economic, different countries have responded differently in opening up their economies. For some, the new economic policy regime has entailed a shift from a state-run economy and focusing more on a free market economy. While some countries have taken a cautious approaching to economic liberalisation, Zambia went for rapid liberalisation, which has led to negative social consequences on employment and the livelihoods of the working class. Through the adoption and implementation of labour market flexibility policies, Zambia and other countries in the region have seen an upswing in new forms of employment such as casual labour, subcontracting and temporary employment, which have no protection and have exposed workers to exploitation. Employment levels have also dropped as the capitalist investors shed off massive numbers of workers in order to reduce labour costs. Local manufacturing industries, in most cases, have been forced to close down and lay-off workers due to unfair competition with cheap imported goods. Liberalisation in developing countries in general and southern Africa in particular, has entailed weakening the role of the state in national economic management. Governments are increasingly succumbing to the dictates of multinationals and are failing to enforce regulatory measures needed to protect the welfare of workers and their working conditions.

The aim for this study is to examine how school personnel perceive adolescents attitude towards drugs and narcotics in general and, in this case, cannabis in particular over a time period of about eleven years. The study focuses on two smaller municipalities to determine whether the previous big city problems of drugs now also effects smaller cities. In the light of a world where cannabis has been liberalized in many countries, both in Europe and America, the question rises of how this will affect the Swedish youth and the Swedish schools. By the two cases examined in this study, one can determine that cannabis has been liberalized in the sense of it being more accepted among the adolescents even if the amount of people using not has risen notably during the examined period. This raises the question what this means for the school personnel, such as mentors, principals and school nurses. In the two cases examined in this study we can determine that the biggest difference in their case is how you must talk to the students about cannabis and how you must present the dangers of using it. Earlier it seems to have been easier to motivate a student not to smoke by mostly talking about how it affects your health negatively. Today, according to some of the respondents, the teachers and other personnel has to be more prepared to face counterargument from students concerning the use of cannabis and whether it is dangerous or not.

O objetivo desta dissertação é retomar a controvérsia em torno dos efeitos da liberalização comercial sobre o mercado de trabalho brasileiro, em especial os diferenciais de salários entre trabalhadores qualificados e não qualificados na indústria de transformação em 1995 e 1999. Após uma adaptação da decomposição de Oaxaca-Blinder (OB), encontramos evidências, para o Brasil como um todo e para a região metropolitana de São Paulo, de que o diferencial de salário aumentou, em benefício dos trabalhadores qualificados. Considerando a hipótese de que o Brasil é um país com abundância de trabalho não qualificado e intensivo neste fator, este resultado é oposto à premissa teórica do modelo Heckscher-Ohlin e Stolper-Samuelson (HOS) e suas variantes, de que a abertura de um país em desenvolvimento, ou intensivo em trabalho não qualificado, tende a diminuir a desigualdade. Do outro lado, encontramos evidências para a região metropolitana de Recife, de que o diferencial salarial entre trabalhadores qualificados e não qualificados diminuiu após a liberalização comercial, corroborando com a premissa teórica do modelo HOS e suas variantes. Entretanto, este resultado não deve, evidentemente, ser estendido para o Brasil, ilustrando assim diferenças regionais e estruturais não negligenciáveis do mercado de trabalho por região da Federação. / The objective of this MA Dissertation was to take up again the controversy of the effects of trade liberalization in Brazilian labor market, specially the wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers in the industry in 1995 and 1999. After an adaptation of Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition (OB), it was found evidence in Brazil as a whole and in Sao Paulo metropolitan area, that wage differential increased for the benefit of skilled workers. On one hand, supposing that Brazil is an economy characterized by unskilled workers abundance which are intensively used, this result is contrary to the premise theory of Heckscher-Ohlin and Stolper-Samuelson (HOS) model and their variants that defends that trade liberalization in developing country, or unskilled worker intensive countries, has a tendency to reduce inequality. On the other hand, it was found evidence in Recife metropolitan area that wage differential between skilled and unskilled workers has reduced after trade liberalization, corroborating with the theory premise of HOS model and their variants. However, this result cannot be extended to Brazil, illustrating, therefore, its labor markets regional and structural differences.

Depuis que la libéralisation financière a été adoptée par la plupart des pays de la région Moyen Orient et Afrique du Nord (MENA), le nombre de crises bancaires n’a pas cessé d’augmenter. Ce qui nous amène à analyser la relation entre libéralisation financière et les crises bancaires. Notre thèse s’attache à mettre en évidence le rôle important de la libéralisation financière sur les crises bancaires. Ce travail traite l’une des principales causes de l’échec de processus de libéralisation financière, à savoir la négligence du rôle primordial que jouent les institutions juridiques, économiques et politiques dans la réalisation de la stabilité financière. Afin de démontrer l’importance de l’organisation institutionnelle, nous avons vérifié l’impact négatif des défaillances institutionnelles présentes dans les pays de la région MENA sur l’occurrence des crises bancaires systémiques. L’objectif de notre recherche est de démontrer que les pays de la région MENA détiennent des caractéristiques institutionnelles très différentes et que pour favoriser l’application des réformes financières libérales, il est désormais indispensable d’envisager des réformes institutionnelles et règlementaires bien adéquates avec les conditions sociales, politiques de chacun des pays de la région MENA. / Since financial liberalization has been adopted by most countries of the Region Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the number of banking crises has not ceased to increase. This leads us to analyze the relationship between financial liberalization and banking crises. Our thesis aims to highlight the important role of financial liberalization on banking crises. This work addresses one of the main causes of the failure of liberalization process Financial namely the negligence of the primordial role played by legal institutions, economic and political in achieving financial stability. To demonstrate the importance of institutional organization, we verified the pejorative impact of institutional failure present in the countries of the MENA region on the occurrence of systemic banking crises. The objective of our research is to demonstrate that the countries of the MENA region hold very different institutional characteristics and to facilitate the implementation of financial reforms liberal, it is henceforth essential to consider well adequate institutional and regulatory reforms with, social political conditions of each country of the MENA region.