Multinational enterprises (MNEs) from Spain made large foreign direct investments (FDIs) in Latin America between 1990 and 2002, making Spain the second largest direct investor in this region since 1998, behind the United States. This dissertation explains the reasons that led Spanish firms to...

Within the next few months, the Greek government, is supposed to persuade private creditors holding about EUR 200bn in its bonds to voluntarily exchange their existing bonds for new bonds that pay roughly 50 percent less. This may work with large creditors whose failure to participate in a debt...

The first essay proposes to test the Grossman and Helpman "Protection for Sale" model using data from the U.S. food processing industries at the 4-digit level. The Grossman and Helpman model departs from previous frameworks of trade protection in that it provides micro-foundations to the...

This research offers an empirical analysis of the economic effects on Morocco from implementing a Free Trade Area (FTA) with the European Union (EU) signed in 1996. Since the FTA translates largely into unilateral discriminatory tariff elimination against EU imports, there are concerns about the...

This dissertation explores the influences of minimum quality standards and of the threat of entry in a vertical product differentiation model. In the first chapter, I study the influence of minimum quality standards in a partial-equilibrium model of vertical product differentiation and trade in...