This study analyzes the main factors that affect sugar imports to the United States from western hemisphere producing countries. Important variables such as Free Trade Agreements, production capacity levels and the quota imposed by the United States to the imported sugar will be analyzed under the scope of the gravity model.
The estimation of the model is carried out using an OLS analysis. The variables used to create a reliable single-commodity gravity model are: sugar production indicators, distances between the involved countries, population, import quotas, and a set of dummy variables such as FTA (Free Trade Agreements) and border, that augment the model in order to identify and capture the effects of transactional costs and productivity on the sugar industry. The main focus is to assess the extent in which the variables affect sugar imports by the United States. The participation of the United States on international trade makes it essential identifying the FTAs in which they are involved. Some of the FTAs are the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), The Dominican Republic and Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), and individual FTAs. On the other hand, the major constraint to U.S. sugar imports are the tariff rate-quotas (TRQ), which are analyzed in order to determine the degree of the effect of this distortion on sugar trade. This research will demonstrate that although the existence of efficient sugar producers and, that FTAs suppose an increase of trade between countries, in the sugar industry, quotas have shown weighting more than any other factor in the U.S. sugar imports.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04082016-141919 |
| Date | 09 May 2016 |
| Creators | Ramirez Hernandez, Katherine |
| Contributors | Kennedy, Philip L., Salassi, Michael, Westra, John |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/octet-stream |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04082016-141919/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds