This thesis provides the background to and an analysis of the economics of exploring for and developing oil and gas discoveries in India. It is aimed at helping the oil and gas industry assess the financial attractiveness of investment in that country. The thesis describes the geography, climate, infrastructure, and energy market with an emphasis on how these affect upstream oil and gas industry investment. A detailed description and analysis is given of the petroleum production sharing contract (&quotPSC&quot) terms embodied in India's New Exploration Licensing Policy (&quotNELP&quot), and demonstrates that, depending on negotiations, Government Take under NELP terms is likely to be in the range 50% to 60% for a stand-alone petroleum development. However, PSC terms are regressive for marginal discoveries. In particular, State royalties might hinder the development of small or marginal discoveries and render them uneconomic. As an illustration, depending on the oil price, up to 6 MMbbls of oil in otherwise economically viable small fields in a geological basin might be made uneconomic and left stranded because of the effect of royalties. The thesis also analyses the economics of developing a sample of actual Indian oil and gas fields offshore the east and west coasts of the country in shallow and deep water. Onshore field developments are not analysed because of lack of data. All of the offshore developments analysed are profitable based on past and current economic conditions and knowledge. The majority are also relatively low-risk investments. Finally, the thesis evaluates the profitability of new oil and gas exploration and development offshore the east and west coasts of India. The required minimum size of new exploration prospects are in the range 10 to 17 MMbbls for oil prospects and 138 to 1,100 Bcf for gas prospects assuming a low probability of success. Once a new discovery is made, the required minimum economically developable reserves are 4 to 12 MMbbls for oil discoveries and 63 to 1,400 Bcf for gas discoveries.

<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>

<p>One of the world’s most severe problems today is poverty. Can it be solved with Fair Trade? During this thesis the topic of Fair Trade and the problems it has to face will be presented. First an introduction will be given on how Fair Trade works, how it developed and where it stands today. Then the problems and the criticisms it has to deal with will be illustrated.  The main focus will be on the problem of the low market share of Fair Trade products and on consumer attitudes towards it. The aim is to find out restrictions and problems of Fair Trade products concerning consumer acceptance, for example reasons why consumers do not buy Fair Trade products and opportunities for further marketing activities to address those problems.  For the second part of this thesis, a quantitative study has been conducted by carrying out a survey among potential Fair Trade consumers, mainly students, which has brought insight into their actual attitude towards Fair Trade and their motivation for buying or not buying Fair Trade products. The results of this study confirm the problems defined in existing literature, which are most notably the high price, a lack of information and trust in Fair Trade and a lack of availability of Fair Trade products. In order to help more of the world’s poor to get out of poverty, it is important to address those problems so that the market share of Fair Trade products can increase.</p>

<p>As the globalization continues to intensify, companies around the world are increasingly looking for business opportunities outside the borders of their home country. In order to be successful and take advantage of low cost opportunities offered in other countries the need for free trade agreements is something all companies should be lobbying for.</p><p>The majority of the Southeast Asian countries are considered underdeveloped and compared to most European countries they are far behind when it comes to political as well as economical developments. Besides, European and Asian countries have very diverse historical backgrounds and peoples’ behaviors differ a lot causing culture clashes and nontariff barriers to trade to arise.</p><p>With the purpose of studying how Swedish companies operating in Southeast Asia can overcome trade obstacles and what impact an EU-ASEAN FTA may have when doing business in the region, the authors have carried out in-depth interviews with five Swedish companies based in Singapore. The thesis covers the different issues Swedish companies face when trading with counterparties in the region and answers the below stated research questions:</p><p>- Which are the main obstacles for Swedish companies to trade within Southeast Asia?</p><p>- How can Swedish companies operating in Southeast Asia overcome these obstacles to trade from a management perspective?</p><p>- What impact can the current EU-ASEAN FTA have on Swedish companies’ potential to succeed in doing business in Southeast Asia?</p><p>The interviews have been put in perspective with the help of theories within obstacles to trade, cultural diversity, economic integration, and FTAs and the main conclusion from the thesis is that all interviewed companies face at least some barriers to trade when operating in the region. Most companies said to have little or no exposure to the tariffs laid out in the region. Only those companies trading frequently with Europe, China, and India regarded tariffs as a somewhat critical obstacle. However, all companies stressed the non-tariff barriers as more severe, especially bureaucracy and time-consuming trade procedures with excessive regulations and administrative practices. Corruption and certain cultural differences</p><p>were other major obstacles to trade.</p><p>There are several ways to overcome existing obstacles to trade through management practices.</p><p>One way is to educate and inform the workers about the cultural differences and the specific business procedures in the countries. Managers should also try to make use of the local employees that possess valuable knowledge about the market.</p><p>A deeper economic integration through EU and ASEAN will eliminate tariffs among the member countries and harmonize business procedures and regulations. With this free trade liberalization, non-tariff barriers to trade will also be reduced as countries and cultures become more unified. The majority of the interviewed companies said they believe they would have little or no use of a potential EU-ASEAN FTA. As the companies are all based in Singapore, which is considered a very liberal and business friendly country, this could be the reason not seeing the actual benefits of collaboration. Nevertheless, all companies agreed the benefits of a potential collaboration to be more than just lower tariffs and pointed to increased integration between people and greater knowledge and understanding between the countries.</p>

Product differentiation is a key feature of modern economies. Although its relevance had already been recognized in the XIX century, it is only in the last forty years that a formal treatment has been developed. The 'address approach' distinguishes between horizontal and vertical product differentiation; in the former, consumers do not agree on the quality ranking of commodities, while in the second they do. The first three chapters of this thesis deal with vertical product differentiation in an imperfectly competitive framework. In particular, the first two essays take into account the empirical evidence concerning labor requirements in the production of vertically differentiated goods in order to model labor and product markets in an upstream-downstream relation to each other. The main assumption is that higher variants of vertically differentiated commodities require highly-skilled labor. This allows to study the links between labor markets and vertically differentiated products markets, their equilibrium implications and issues of trade liberalization. The third chapter explores another side of vertical product differentiation, namely the time-to-market of vertically differentiated goods. This interval, which corresponds to the lapse of time for a product to reach the market, is studied under the assumption that firms can make it shorter through costly investments. The analysis compares firms' choices as a function of the parameters characterizing products and technologies and of market structure. The last chapter develops a general equilibrium model with imperfect competition. The concept of monopoly equilibrium is applied to a Ricardian economy in order to study the emergence of trade in that framework.

This thesis investigates the relationships between trade, specialization and growth at the regional level for Spain's Autonomous Communities. First, we test for the existence of a long-run relationship between per capita GDP and trade, for 15 Spanish Autonomous Communities between 1988 and 2004, using the cointegration methodology. In particular, we will implement several newly-developed panel unit root tests and panel cointegration tests, with a special attention to their behaviour in a small sample. Our cointegration results reject the existence of a significant relationship between GDP per capita and exports. However, we do find some evidence of a significant relationship between GDP per capita and imports. Building on these cointegration results, we then examine how the relationship between per capita GDP and trade may depend on the level of specialization or on the extent of structural change undertaken between 1988 and 2003. In particular, we investigate the pattern of cross-correlation between regions emerging from their relationship GDP-Trade, using as determinants variables expressing economic geography, specialization and the evolution of structural change. While the inclusion of specialization does not affect the significance of the cointegration tests, our empirical strategy do compile converging evidence on the importance of structural change for Spain's regional development. Finally, we explore the mapping between specialization and trade in Spain's Autonomous Communities at the industry level. Does regional specialization in a particular industry translates into a greater level of export? We estimate an equation explaining the volume of intra-European exports, including the index specialization and other determinants of trade. Overall, the econometric analysis confirms the existence of a mapping between specialization and exports. By comparison, the counterfactual relationship between specialization and imports is negative or not significant, and perhaps spurious. / La présente thèse porte sur les relations liant la croissance économique, le commerce international et la spécialisation au niveau régional au sein des Communautés Autonomes d'Espagne. En premier lieu, nous testons pour l'existence d'une relation de long-terme entre le PIB per capita et le commerce international, pour 15 Communautés Autonomes entre 1988 et 2004, en recourant à la technique de la cointégration. En particulier, nous réalisons plusieurs tests – développés récemment - de racine unitaire ou de cointégration en panel, en portant une attention particulière au problème d'échantillon temporel court ainsi qu'à la corrélation entre les régions. Les tests de cointégration rejettent l'existence d'une relation long-terme entre le PIB per capita et les exportations. Par contre, nos résultats tendent à accepter l'existence d'une relation long-terme entre le PIB per capita et les importations. A partir de ces résultats de cointégration, nous tentons ensuite d'examiner en quoi la relation long-terme entre le PIB per capita et le commerce international peut dépendre du niveau de spécialisation régionale ou de l'ampleur des changements structurels entrepris entre 1988 et 2003. En particulier, nous tentons d'expliquer la structure de la corrélation croisée existant entre les régions dans leur relation PIB-commerce international, en utilisant comme déterminants des variables mesurant la géographie économique, le niveau de spécialisation et l'évolution des changements structurels. Bien que l'inclusion de la variable de spécialisation n'affecte pas directement la signifiance de la relation de cointégration entre le PIB per capita et le commerce international, notre stratégie empirique tend à confirmer l'importance des changements structurels pour le développement de l'Espagne. Enfin, nous explorons le « mapping » entre la spécialisation et le commerce international au niveau des industries au sein des Communautés Autonomes d'Espagne. La question est de savoir à quel degré la spécialisation régionale dans une industrie se transmet-elle en un niveau plus élevé des exportations. Pour ce faire, nous estimons une équation expliquant les déterminants des exportations intra-communautaires au niveau industrie-région, dont un indice mesurant la spécialisation de la région dans cette industrie, ainsi que d'autres déterminants du commerce international. En somme, l'analyse économétrique confirme l'existence d'un « mapping » significatif entre la spécialisation et les exportations. En comparaison, la relation entre la spécialisation et les importations apparaît comme étant négative ou non significative, et peut-être même fallacieuse sur le plan économétrique.

On cover: World Oil Project. / NSF Grant no. DAR 78-19044.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Kentucky, 2006. / Title from document title page (viewed on January 23, 2007). Document formatted into pages; contains: ix, 157 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-153).

Thesis (M. P. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (S. J. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.