In the process of implementing market reforms, many post-socialist countries have struggled to preserve economic and political integration. Using a statistical model of commodity trade, we quantify the evolution of economic integration observed among regions within Russia during 1995-1999, and...

The first round of negotiations held in Ottawa on the 19th October, 2009, heraldedthe opening of bilateral trade talks intent on reaching a Canadian-European Union(EU27) free trade area (FTA) agreement. A second round of negotiations were staged inBrussels in January, whilst further rounds are...

O objetivo central deste trabalho é fazer uma retrospectiva histórica do processo de formação do Mercosul, o desenvolvimento das relações comerciais, bem como o conseqüente processo de convergência e divergência neste contexto. E ainda avaliar a eficácia do processo de interação no...

As networks improve and new services emerge, questions arise that affect service deployments and network choices. The Internet is arguably a successful example of a network shared by many services. However, combining heterogeneous services on the same network need not always be the right answer,...

This dissertation contains three essays that can be read independently. The first chapter examines how a debt crisis can occur and persist as a result of unanticipated, transitory, real interest rate and commodity price shocks. Using an optimal stopping framework, the debtor country's optimal...

This study is an empirical analysis of household expenditure behavior using the Linear and Quadratic Expenditure Systems. The expenditure systems are estimated using data collected in 1972 by the Departmento Administrativo Nacional de Estadisticas (DANE) of Bogota, Colombia. The Linear...

My dissertation research is composed of two parts: a theoretical part on semiparametric efficient estimation and an applied part in energy economics under different dynamic settings. The essays are related in terms of their applications as well as the way in which models are constructed and...

In the first chapter; we consider nonlinear transformations of random walks driven by thick-tailed innovations with infinite means or variances. In particular, we show how nonlinearity, nonstationarity, and thick tails interact to generate persistency in memory, and we clearly demonstrate that...

We study incentive compatible profit-sharing rules when output (or profit) is obtained via the joint use of a technology exhibiting decreasing marginal returns. The incentives compatibility criterion we adopt is that of strategy-proofness (SP), arguably the most robust and the most demanding...