Technical regulations are a form of non-tariff barrier that is becoming increasingly visible in agricultural trade disputes. A distinguishing feature of technical barriers is their legitimate use by governments to protect consumers' health, recognize citizen preferences in packaging and labeling, and protect the environment from the establishment of non-indigenous pests and diseases. When legitimate externalities or other market failures are addressed technical barriers have the potential to increase national welfare, even without consideration of terms-of-trade effects. Governments may also impose technical barriers to isolate domestic producers from international competition. In these cases under the small-country assumptions, technical barriers are welfare decreasing policies. Despite GATT rules designed to limit the misuse of technical barriers, continued disputes indicate that this type of regulatory measure can not always be justified on the basis of unambiguous scientific evidence and suggests that governments may still widely apply technical barriers of questionable merit. Political economy is one paradigm that explains government intervention in markets, even when the result is a loss in net welfare. The 1996 USDA Survey of Technical Barriers to U.S. Agricultural Exports provides a systematic source of primary data on technical measures which caused actual or projected export revenue losses to U.S. firms in 1996 and which might be subject to challenge under the Uruguay Round Agreements. Although no questionable technical barriers to 1996 U.S. agricultural exports were reported for 71 countries included in the Survey, there were a total of 302 barriers identified among 63 countries. The estimated trade impact of the barriers reported was $4.9 billion, or approximately seven percent of the total value of 1996 U.S. agricultural exports. Two sets of empirical models are estimated to identify the political economy determinants of questionable technical barriers as they are applied to U.S. agricultural exports. The incidence of questionable technical barriers is measured by the presence or absence of such barriers by country. The impact of questionable technical barriers is measured by the reported estimated trade impact as a percentage of 1996 U.S. agricultural exports to that country. Results indicate that, despite strengthened GATT disciplines, political economy considerations continue to influence the incidence and impact of technical barriers in international agricultural markets. / Ph. D.

yes / The transformation dynamics of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Kosovo rubs salt into the war wounds of economically vulnerable sectors of society in a context of fragile political and security situations, complex or ambiguous constitutional status and an imprecise and contested balance of power between international direction and local ownership. The protectors have been imposing a model of economic transformation, ultimately derived from the neoliberal economic ideology of aggressive capitalism and the 1989 Washington consensus on developmentalism. The inhabitants of war-torn societies have often clung to clientism, shadow economic activities and resistance to centrally-audited exchange. This paper contends that what is sometimes portrayed as a clash between neoliberal modernity and a pre-modern `Balkan way¿ is questionable in its dyadic assumptions and its underestimation of linkages between the spheres of neoliberalism and nationalist¿mafia¿clientism.

yes / This commentary adopts a critical political economy perspective and therefore contests the liberal order that divorces the political from the economic. Orthodox `economy building¿ operations adopt unreflective assumptions about economic laws and treat economic reform as a technical, a-political, value-free issue. Nor does the critical perspective offered here endorse the liberal project¿s assumption that physical and structural violence can be artificially divorced. This piece contends that distributive injustice and structural violence continue when physical violence stops.

Neoliberalism once started as an economic theory but overtime has developed into an arm of state social control. This thesis asks if neoliberal economic policies have affected civil liberties in the United States and sets out to understand this relationship in several ways. Firstly, by investigating the shift from Keynesianism to market fundamentalism. Secondly, by evaluating the growth in the prison industrial complex. Third, by asking questions of growing social insecurity from an increasingly privatized social safety net. This thesis explored four hypotheses, each one finding support. The overall argument is that the economic sphere and the free market has obstructed the social sphere. Finally, the thesis concludes with a brief discussion of toxic individualism as it relates to socialization after a long period of extreme market privatization. / Master of Arts / Ever since the 1980s, the United States has experienced an increase in incarceration rates, and simultaneously a more substantial shift in economic practices, from Keynesianism to what became colloquially known as "trickle down economics." This thesis argues that the economic change, defined in this work as neoliberalism, subsequently affected how welfare and social services manage social insecurity in the United States, including the criminal justice system. This paper will discuss the tenets of neoliberalism and how these core tenets, i.e. privatization, affected the welfare state and the prison industrial complex.

No / This book discusses how the global financial crisis induced the 'Great Recession' and triggered problems within the eurozone regarding sovereign debt. It explores the background of the eurozone crisis, as well as outlines a number of potential solutions. The authors argue that the failure of the eurozone to meet any convergence criteria, together with unjustified emphasis placed upon unproven rules and institutions derived from contemporary neoliberal macroeconomic thinking, was an accident waiting to happen. Additionally, a series of potential remedies is proposed, ranging from a critical evaluation of solutions that the EU has already instigated (moral persuasion and financial relief measures), together with a series of alternative propositions (fiscal federalism and a 'European Clearing Union'). Moreover, the analysis is extended to the collapse of the eurozone and to options for national economic self-governance. This study, with its comprehensive analysis of the eurozone crisis, is essential reading for students, researchers and scholars of monetary economics, European economics, political science and international relations.

Yes / This study applies a new multi-focal actor-centered institution-theoretic approach to examine the association between executive pay and the recruitment of social elites to the board of directors in developing countries. We use a sample of 119 initial public offerings (IPOs) from 17 African stock markets to model this relationship. The results suggest that a higher proportion of elites on the board is associated with lower executive pay. This is moderated by institutional quality; that is, lower institutional quality is associated with more directors drawn from social elites and with higher pay, while the opposite is true in higher-institutional-quality environments. Our findings confirm the importance of the social environment within which governance is embedded.

Local government policy often relies on taxation to address the central concern of ensuring municipal growth. This paper uses a measure of taxes compiled by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government called the Kosmont Cost of Doing Business rating to discuss the effects of tax policy on growth. The goal of this paper is to use the spatial equilibrium model to estimate the correlation between the cost of doing business and certain basic observable outcomes. These outcomes are reflected in wage, population, and price levels. The underlying spatial equilibrium model leads to “deep effects” equations, which are used to connect these observable correlations to more tangible measures of growth. Through the deep effects equations, we analyze the effect of the cost of doing business on the productivity, amenities, and economic success of California’s cities. We find that a higher cost of doing business does not lead to lower productivity and amenities, but rather improves amenities and maintains steady levels of productivity under a long-term equilibrium.

The research attempts to explain the character of Malaysia’s political economy. By adopting a historical institutional analysis it explains that British colonial administration persistently made rational choices within a short-term horizon that encouraged the growth of two autonomous groups – Malays and Chinese - whose political, economic and social organisation, at the point of Malaya’s independence in 1957, had made it inevitable for them to embark on some form of consociational arrangement. British policies engendered two processes; first, a less-than-full incorporation of Chinese as new actors in Malaya’s political economy and second, a less-than-full retrenchment of Malay political dominance by preserving Malay de jure power. In sum, British decision to preserve Malay de jure power while at the same time incorporate Chinese economic and political presence created two communities with mutually exclusive institutions that increasingly competed for access to political and economic resources. The self-reinforcing nature of these exclusive institutions and the flux that came with the demands for Malaya’s independence made it necessary for these two communities to attempt various institutional options that could best reconcile exclusive institutions and negotiate competing political and economic demands. Three institutional options were tried: consociationalism, integration and partition. The research will explain that among the three, the path-dependent nature of Malaya’s political economy had necessitated a particular institutional logic, the consociational logic. Integration failed because attempts to establish common institutions and do away completely with longstanding mutually exclusive ones proved over-ambitious. Partition also did not materialise as it proved politically and financially costly. In sum, the research highlights Malaysia’s consociationalism as a product of small incremental policy steps which proved to be no less transformational in the long run that gives Malaysia’s political economy a quite different character than it had had at the start of British official rule in 1874.

Mitigating climate change requires the collaborative and international management of a range of socio-economic processes that produce greenhouse gas emissions. Governments in a number of regions are developing carbon markets to mitigate climate change by limiting the production of greenhouse gases. This thesis examines the construction of carbon markets in the United States and Europe to understand what role these markets play in mitigating climate change. Using a relational economic geography framework and institutional theory, I frame the markets into two components: 1) the regulatory structures which give the markets existence and bound their rules of operation, and 2) the financial and service components which operationalized the markets. Within these components, I investigate four specific facets of market development: complementarity, spacetime, design vs. path dependence and institutional development. The study is conducted through close dialogue and case studies of organization in London, New York and Chicago as well as interviews with policymakers in Washington D.C. Sacramento, and San Francisco. I find that the regulatory components of the market are built both by regulatory agencies and private organizations such as legal firms. Political path dependence constrains the development of the regulatory framework of the carbon markets. The financial service components are constructed in existing financial service centers such as London and New York by directly adopting expertise, products, services and infrastructure from other markets. With respect to the spacetime construction of markets, I find that carbon markets are being adapted to management in existing time zones, with a seamless transaction of activity between North America, Europe and Asia. However, the nature of spacetime within the markets is changing; the markets now manage non-spacetime. In sum, the carbon markets are constructed as a social institution which mitigates greenhouse gas production by communicating and widely disseminating the value of the absence of emissions.

A percepção de que a economia é um sistema isolado e sem influência de fatores externos é, em algumas circunstâncias, incompleta. Considerando a validade deste raciocínio, o propósito principal desta tese é prover evidências empíricas a respeito de como fatores econômicos podem influenciar e ser influenciados por um elemento social que vem recebendo atenção especial e crescente da literatura econômica: Política. Particularmente, os municípios brasileiros durante os anos de 1989 a 2003 são o foco de três investigações distintas, separadas em três capítulos que preservam uma característica comum: uma abordagem de Econometria de dados em painel. O primeiro capítulo é uma análise a respeito de dois fenômenos específicos: o primeiro é a ocorrência, em anos eleitorais, de alterações em categorias distintas de despesas públicas ? comumente conhecido como ciclos políticos oportunistas. O segundo é a ocorrência de alterações fiscais em função de diferenças partidárias por parte dos governantes ? em outras palavras, os ciclos políticos partidários. O segundo capítulo é uma extensão natural da análise realizada no capítulo anterior, em que a possibilidade de reeleição é analisada levando em consideração como a mesma é influenciada pela política fiscal dos municípios brasileiros e pela existência de diferentes partidos políticos. Finalmente, o terceiro capítulo pode ser visto como uma avaliação particular, em que os superávits e déficits dos municípios do estado de São Paulo são analisados através da implementação da metodologia de viés de seleção numa estrutura de dados em painel, uma vez que a possibilidade de ocorrência de um superávit (déficit) fiscal não deveria ser assumida como um evento puramente aleatório. Embora resultados específicos sejam apresentados em cada capítulo, a substancial relação entre elementos econômicos e políticos, providos por uma avaliação geral desta tese, pode ser vista como sua principal contribuição. / The perception that the economy is an isolated system with no influence from external factors is, occasionally, incomplete. By considering the legitimacy of such thought, the main purpose of this thesis is to provide empirical evidences of how economic factors can influence and be influenced by a particular social element which has been receiving special and increasing interest from the economic literature: Politics. Particularly, Brazilian cities over the 1989 ? 2003 period is the focus of three different investigations, separated in three chapters which preserve a common characteristic: a panel data Econometrics approach. The first chapter is an investigation about the possibility of two specific phenomena: the first is the occurrence of changes in election years in different types of public expenditures ? commonly understood as political opportunistic cycles. The second is the occurrence of fiscal changes due to government partisanship differences - in other words, the political partisanship cycles. The second chapter is a natural extension of the analysis provided in the previous chapter, as the possibility of reelection is analyzed taking into consideration how it is influenced by Brazilian cities fiscal policy and by the existence of different political parties. Finally, the third chapter can be observed as a particular examination, as the fiscal surpluses and deficits of São Paulo state municipalities are evaluated by applying the sample selection approach in a panel data structure, due to the possibility that the occurrence of a fiscal surplus (deficit) should not be taken as a purely random outcome. Even though specific results are presented by each chapter, the substantial relation connecting economic and political elements, provided by a general evaluation of the current thesis, can be seen as its foremost contribution.