The common agricultural policy (CAP) is a much discussed policy in the European Union (EU). It allocates great sums to the European agricultural sector every year and has been accused of being trade distorting and outdated. This thesis takes a closer look at what protectionist measures the CAP has used. The policy’s effects on trade will be assessed employing the sugar industry as a reference case. Sugar is heavily protected and is one of the most distorted sectors in agriculture. The CAP effects on trade in the sugar industry for ten countries in and outside the EU from 1991 to 2011 are estimated using a gravity model. This particular type of estimation has, to the author’s knowledge, not been performed for the sugar industry before, which makes the study unique. The results of the empirical testing indicates that trade diversion occurs if one country is a member of the CAP and its trading partner is not. When both trading partners are outside the CAP cooperation, they are estimated to have a higher trade volume. This result indicates that the CAP decreases trade. Current economic theory, in particular the North-South model of trade developed by Krugman (1979), suggests that protectionism of non-competitive sectors should be abolished and funds should instead be directed to innovation and new technology. The CAP is in this sense not adapted to modern economic thought.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed October 22, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-170).

Science studies contends that scientific knowledge is produced through social and geographical processes. This dissertation applies this insight to the production of economic knowledge, specifically addressing how the Anti-Corn Law League, an organization that campaigned against the protectionist Corn Laws in Britain in the 1830s and 40s, made economic truth. The argument is organized in five chapters. The Introduction discusses the key theoretical ideas from science studies – controversy, consensus, and credibility – that later chapters use in interpreting the Anti-Corn Law campaign. Chapter II supplies the social and intellectual context of the Anti-Corn Law movement, showing how its origins in Manchester shaped its meaning, and how uncertainty about the benefits of free trade compelled Leaguers to present a persuasive case for it. Chapter III explores how the League’s public meetings were conducted, arguing that economic knowledge was produced through the processes of presenting and authenticating testimony, in which mass assent, expressed through various imaginaries of the nation, functioned as a rhetorical voucher of truth. Chapter IV examines a case in which assent was not attained, and the means through which the League sought to maintain credibility. It is argued that the League depicted itself as trustworthy according to assumptions society shared about what counted as knowledge and honesty, assumptions that constituted what can be called a cultural map of credibility. The Conclusion summarizes the main arguments of the thesis. It explicitly relates the study to the literature on the geographies of science, and elaborates on how geographical imaginations are inscribed in the process of knowledge production.

A review on free trade principle in theory and practice suggests that trade liberalization is merely rhetoric under which industrialized countries can pursue specific interests of certain actors more deceptively. The purpose of this thesis is to testify whether this preliminary result on general trade issues is valid in the textile and clothing sector as well. The reasons for the author to narrow her research scope down to this industry are that: first, textiles and clothing had been subject to consistent trade protectionism for more than thirty years since the discriminatory Multi-Fiber Arrangement (MFA) in 1974; second, the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) in 1995 was designed to remove all quota restrictions by 1st January 2005 via a ten-year transitional period; third, the European Union (EU) raised safeguard investigations within four months after the expiry of the agreement, and succeeded in re-introducing quantitative restraints back to this sector. The intense and dramatic Europe-China textile dispute in 2005 started from the completion of quota abolishment, but ended up with quota re-imposition, which inspires the author to ask whether the European Union’s trade liberalization in the textile and clothing sector is rhetoric or reality. The thesis examines the conventional stance of the Union’s textile and clothing policy, the actual fulfillment of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC), and the development of the Europe-China trade dispute on in 2005. In order to identify involved interest groups and their demands during the implementation of the agreement and in the dispute shortly afterwards, the thesis also analyzes: first, the interaction between protectionist lobbying groups and national governments at the Union’s level; and second, the divergence on the attitudes towards China’s expansion in the European market among member states.             Comparing the Union’s early promises in the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) with its actual behaviors during implementation and in dispute, the author finally concludes that the Union’s trade liberalization in the textile and clothing sector is merely rhetoric under which the European Union (EU) pursues the protectionist interests of its domestic textile and clothing producers and those member states with substantial textile and clothing industry.

The initial concern of this thesis is to understand the historical conditions that conditioned the two writers (Akyigitzade Musa and Mehmed Cavid) who had written on economic issues in the late Ottoman era, in addition to display their perception of state in their essential works. Thus, in order to locate these two writers in a historical time-frame and to explore the understanding and the reality of the Ottoman state at the end of the nineteenth century, the thesis is dealing with the major issues of the Ottoman modernisation history in a concise sense, and it is aiming at disposing the righteous stead and the importance of these two writers in the Ottoman economics literature, while giving an overall review of Ottoman economic perspectives in terms of their relationship with Western economic thought. Finally, the thesis tackles the personalities and biographies of these writers in order to expose the social conditions that determined the thinking of these writers, and lay out the anatomy of the state as conceptualised by them on the basis of their original texts. So, following the ascertainment of these structures, their impact over the work and the life of these two writers is being considered. Thus, it is an attempt to provide an explanation of the physical and mental conditions that structured the writings and their perception of the state.

Science studies contends that scientific knowledge is produced through social and geographical processes. This dissertation applies this insight to the production of economic knowledge, specifically addressing how the Anti-Corn Law League, an organization that campaigned against the protectionist Corn Laws in Britain in the 1830s and 40s, made economic truth. The argument is organized in five chapters. The Introduction discusses the key theoretical ideas from science studies – controversy, consensus, and credibility – that later chapters use in interpreting the Anti-Corn Law campaign. Chapter II supplies the social and intellectual context of the Anti-Corn Law movement, showing how its origins in Manchester shaped its meaning, and how uncertainty about the benefits of free trade compelled Leaguers to present a persuasive case for it. Chapter III explores how the League’s public meetings were conducted, arguing that economic knowledge was produced through the processes of presenting and authenticating testimony, in which mass assent, expressed through various imaginaries of the nation, functioned as a rhetorical voucher of truth. Chapter IV examines a case in which assent was not attained, and the means through which the League sought to maintain credibility. It is argued that the League depicted itself as trustworthy according to assumptions society shared about what counted as knowledge and honesty, assumptions that constituted what can be called a cultural map of credibility. The Conclusion summarizes the main arguments of the thesis. It explicitly relates the study to the literature on the geographies of science, and elaborates on how geographical imaginations are inscribed in the process of knowledge production.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf [108]-112).

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1991.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--George Washington University, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 449-465).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania. / Published also without thesis note. Bibliography: p. 320-332.