Trade Liberalization, Corn Prices and a Rural Community in Guatemala

Trade liberalization policies in Guatemala have impacted agricultural production. This thesis focuses on how trade liberalization has happened, what have been the impacts at a national level and describes how a community has adapted to the implementation of these policies. The implementation of trade was influenced by several, international and national institutions. Among the international institutions are the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the United States Agency for International Development. At the national level the institutions that have partaken in shaping the trade policies are the military and the owners of capital and labor. The implementation of trade policies at a national level has affected national corn prices, population level diets and to some extent reduced poverty levels. At a local level trade liberalization policies have impacted land holdings, increased intensification of agriculture, including agrochemical, machinery and crop plantations per year, and consumption rates of corn have been affected. Maximization of the benefits and minimization of the detrimental effects can happen with the implementation of policies that promote food security, improve access to health and education, and prevent environmental and human health consequences from the intensification of agriculture and at the same time continue with the production of non-traditional agricultural products.

ESSAYS ON INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SPILLOVERS

The dissertation consists of three essays on international research and development spillovers. In the first essay, I investigate the degree to which differences in institutional arrangements among Sub-Saharan African countries determine the extent of benefits they derive from foreign research and development spillovers. In particular, I compare the international research and development spillovers for English common law and French civil law Sub-Saharan African countries. I show that differences in the legal origin of the company law or commercial codes in these countries may reflect the extent of barriers they place in the paths of firms that engage in the investment process. To tests this hypothesis, I constructed foreign R&D spillovers variable using imports as weights and employed the endogenous growth framework to estimate elasticities of productivity with respect to foreign R&D spillovers for a sample of 17 English common law and French Civil law Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1980-2004. My results find support for the hypothesis. In particular, foreign R&D spillovers were higher in the English common law countries than in the French civil law countries. In the second essay, I examine the question of whether technical cooperation grants and overseas development assistance grants induce R&D knowledge spillovers in Sub-Saharan African countries. I test this hypothesis using data for 11 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1980-2004. I constructed foreign R&D spillovers using the technical cooperation grants and overseas development assistance grants as weights and employed the endogenous growth framework to provide quantitative estimates of foreign R&D spillover effects in 11 Sub-Saharan African countries. I find that technical cooperation grants and overseas development assistance grants are major mechanisms through which returns to R&D investments in G7 countries flows to Sub-Saharan African countries. However, their influence has declined over the years. Finally, the third essay tests the hypothesis that the relationship between a country's exporters and their foreign purchasing agents may lead to the exchange of ideas and thereby improve the manufacturing process and productivity in the exporting country. I test this hypothesis using disaggregated export data from OECD countries. The foreign R&D capital stock in this essay was constructed as exports weighted average of domestic R&D capital stock. I find empirical support for the hypothesis. In particular, capital goods exports generate more learning effects and therefore best explain productivity in OECD countries than non-capital goods exports.