Semester

Fall

Date of Graduation

2005

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Chambers College of Business and Economics

Department

Economics

Committee Chair

Subhayu Bandyopadhyay.

Abstract

The dissertation aims to help us understand the economic mechanism of and the impacts of international trade and factor flows. It comprises three essays, each of which focuses a separate aspect of trade and factor flows.;First essay illuminates the issue of trade policy and illegal immigration in a rigorous theoretical analysis. We emphasize the presence of interrelationship between trade policy and illegal immigration by employing so called the Mead model. First, we present how trade policy influences the amount of illegal immigration. Second, we analyze the economic welfare of complete free trade by incorporating illegal immigration. Third, we illustrate the condition which bilateral trade negotiation is compatible with multilateral trade negotiation. Finally, we extend the analysis to a large open economy case in which endogenous terms of trade adds the complexity in the effect of trade policy on illegal immigration and the economic welfares of the countries.;Second essay focuses on the effect of international trade and factor flows on domestic taxation. We examine how the effective tax rates of labor, capital and consumption for the members of OECD are related to economic integration. Our empirical analysis extends the existing literature by incorporating factor flows into the equation. We emphasize one of our findings that labor flow particularly has a negative association with the effective tax rates of capital and consumption. The trade volume, though it is one most argued, is found a relatively weak link with the taxation.;Third essay scrutinizes the effect of trade policy on domestic wage rates by specifically looking into US economy. Our main purpose is to conduct an empirical analysis that tackles the question whether trade policy causes the regional wage differential. We found that various tariffs and non-tariff barriers have had regional impacts on the skill premium of wages in the U.S. The finding adds a complexity on the assessment of trade policy where we now need to have the regional welfare analysis of trade policy in addition to the national level.

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