This thesis analyzes some of the fundamental, direct consequences of the East Asian meltdown for the global economy--and specifically for the North American food and agricultural producers. To study the impact of this economic crisis, the study develops a novel dynamic global general equilibrium...

There is abundant literature analyzing the effects of policy changes on poverty and the poor, the majority of whom are concentrated in rural areas and employed in agricultural activities. However this literature remains mute on whether or not the policy impacts on poverty are likely to be...

Infrastructure and institutional settings for international trade play a key role in the efficient exchange of merchandise goods across borders. Once final goods depart the producer warehouse, a number of legal procedures associated with customs and security need to be completed at the...

Geography matters. This is the fundamental premise of this thesis. All three essays utilize time series/cross section data on bilateral trade flows amongst the nations of the world to provide insights about how important developments in one part of the global economy affect other countries. Two...

The burgeoning field of empirical international trade has recently identified two "mysteries" associated with the poor performance of the well known Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek model, which makes predictions about the factor content of trade. The first mystery is the "Case of the Missing Trade," and...

There has been a surge of interest in free trade agreements (FTAs) in East Asian countries. One of the FTAs actively discussed is the Japan and ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations) free trade agreement. The purpose of this study is to undertake quantitative analysis of the...

The global outsourcing of services has become increasingly important in the debate over globalization. In India, the most high profile services exporter, GDP per capita increased rapidly between 2001 and 2006 in a climate of increasing services trade, with the export-oriented services sector...

This thesis extends the real option value framework developed by Pindyck to define optimal capacity for the U.S. anhydrous ammonia industry from 1971-1991. The model is well suited to the characteristics of ammonia capacity investment. It recognizes the role of uncertainty in the demand for...

This dissertation studies agricultural productivity growth in developing countries and its implications for world trade. It begins by examining one of the most controversial aspects in the empirical literature: the evidence of negative agricultural productivity growth in developing countries. It...

Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models are increasingly used for global trade policy analyses. This thesis addresses three issues that have arisen in this context. The first is the question of model validation: Do these models capture the kind of behavior actually observed in markets? The...