In 2006, the British Standards Institute (BSI) published BS 8887-1 'Design for Manufacture, Assembly, Disassembly and End-of-life processing' (MADE) subtitled 'General Concepts, Processes and Requirements'. This was the first British Standard to address design for efficient post-consumer product...

Recent environmental trends, including (1) an expansion of existing command and control directives, (2) the introduction of market-based policy instruments, and (3) the adoption of extended producer responsibility, have created a need for new tools to help managerial decision-making. To address...

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 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...

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...

This dissertation explores the interconnections that exist between international financial institutions, the state's implementation of economic policies, and the development of resistance movements in Latin America. The first part of this research looks at the three main models of economic...

International labor standards are among the oldest international standards pertaining to the conduct of private, as well as public, economic actors. Far from being settled, however, nearly every aspect of the current international labor standards regime is in flux: the role of labor standards in...

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...