Academic literature on the topic 'International exports'

This paper explores the relationship between lagged stock returns and export growth in a panel of worldwide markets. Previous studies have focused on analyzing the effect of future economic output growth on stock returns. This study finds that annualized changes in a foreign country’s exports to the United States five to seven years in the future, defined as long-term, positively predict the annual stock market returns while the nation’s total export changes are already priced-in. An additional percentage point increase in long-term exports to the United States growth results in a 0.1 to 3.5 percentage point rise in annual stock returns. However, both growth in total exports and those to the United States do not predict equity returns over the short-term, defined as average annual growth from year 0 to year 4. Thus, establishing a foothold and cracking the highly competitive and homogeneous United States market is not guaranteed and unpredictable, requiring 5 years of investments before successful foreign firms are able convert it into earnings. Alternatively, investors may be shortsighted, uninformed, and pay limited attention about a foreign country’s exports to the United States beyond their forecast horizon, for example, five years. Moreover, the analysis finds that GDP growth at both the foreign country and United States level does not affect lagged foreign stock returns and could be priced-in, unlike long-term growth in the nation’s exports to United States.

Master of Agribusiness<br>Department of Agricultural Economics<br>Vincent Amanor-Boadu<br>The beef industry is a very important in the food sector of agriculture and over the past two decades the United States beef industry has faced many challenges. Over time the distribution of beef exports have changed due to food safety issues and government policies, not just in the U.S., but on a global scale forcing U.S. beef producers to diversify their export outputs to other countries that were not previously strong leaders in the export business. The U.S. must be strategic in their production decisions in order to continue to compete on a global level to avoid significant loss during adverse conditions. One of the major challenges that the U.S. industry has faced is the discovery of BSE in late 2003 in the state of Washington, which led to the closing of many borders to countries who had a significant impact on the beef industry in the U.S. Since U.S. beef is highly regarded by consumers for its quality worldwide, it is important to understand what changes have taken place in the past to have a full understanding of what changes need to be made in the future. The objective of this thesis is to look at how the distribution of the value, volume and price of U.S. beef exports have changed over the past two decades. By looking at how this has changed we will be able to see what countries are emerging as important customers and how others have declined. This is extremely important since some of the major importing countries have changed or put restrictions on the U.S. beef industry over the past two decades and the industry needs to understand these changes so that they can remain strong in the export sector. By analyzing the global trends of U.S. beef exports by value, volume and price across principal regions of the world, research will show us how to change for future changes. By assessing the effect of the discovery of BSE in the U.S on changes in the distribution of beef exports across the global regions, research will show who emerged when other countries declined. By using this research, the foregoing results will be helpful to inform the industry on what export market strategy can be developed for the U.S. beef industry. The results suggest that BSE had some negative effect on the U.S. beef industry in terms of the value and volume but did not have an impact on the price per pound of beef. Some regions had a larger impact than others when BSE was discovered, such as East Asia, but during this other regions, such as North America, came through and became the leaders in exports for U.S. beef. While there was some growth from the Rest of the World, there was not enough of an impact to compete with the foregoing countries.

This thesis critically examines exports of Iranian natural gas to regional and international markets. Owning the world’s 2nd largest proven natural gas reserves, Iran can potentially be considered a major gas exporter. Yet, stringent international sanctions, coupled with domestic politicisation of the industry and lack of an ‘attractive’ investment framework, have made Iran unable to capitalise its huge natural gas potential both in domestic and international markets. In this research, a multidisciplinary approach is adopted to examine the main challenges hampering Iran’s ability to become a major gas exporter. These challenges range from political and legal to economic and fiscal. In this thesis, the extent to which the Iranian gas industry is affected by progressive international sanctions, particularly as a result of U.S. pressures, is considered extensively. It appears that U.S. and international sanctions have had detrimental impact on the development of the Iranian petroleum industry through limiting Iran’s access to financial institutions and technologies. In addition, in Iran the constant policy struggle between the need for foreign investment and technology in the petroleum sector on one hand, and the sentiment towards foreign exploitation on the other, is analysed in terms of impact of political challenges in the development of Iran’s natural gas industry. The legal and fiscal terms of buyback contracts as the only available contractual framework for development of the upstream petroleum sector is also reviewed as a part of the evaluation of the ‘attractiveness’ of Iran’s investment framework. This research offers second thoughts on the over-estimated role of law in development of natural resources and illuminates the importance of other factors, including policy making and governance institutions, in attracting foreign investors and the development of the petroleum sector. In the discussion about the development of Iran’s natural gas industry, subsidies are also identified as economic challenges, deterring foreign investors, causing wasteful consumption and creating an inflated domestic market. Two years into the subsidies reform in Iran, the plan has fallen short of achieving its objectives, including controlling domestic energy consumption and freeing up capital to be re-invested in the petroleum industry, mainly as a result of deteriorating economic conditions and Government mismanagement. The issue of supplying gas to domestic or export markets in the light of the country’s current limited production capacity has turned into a major political debate between the Parliament and the Government resulting in failure to fully meet its supply commitments to either market. Inability to produce adequate volumes of gas and its ‘ambitious’ gas expansion policies both in domestic and international markets, has forced the country to import gas from Turkmenistan. The unexpected title of ‘a net gas importer’ for a country with the 2nd largest gas reserves in the world, has raised many questions over the country’s ability to substantially contribute to the growing global gas market. In this thesis, attempts are also made to highlight the social and economic benefits of allocating gas to domestic and export markets. However, conducting a solid economic analysis is not possible, as first of all, such an analysis is beyond the scope of this thesis, and secondly the required data and statistical material is not available or accessible. This research suggests that given the country’s huge domestic market, industrialisation targets, young population and the necessity for job creation, as well as country’s dependence on gas re-injection into oilfields to maintain the oil production, Iran may not want to be “the next Qatar” in terms of exports. Available data suggest that gas export is not the most beneficial economic outcome for Iranian gas; and for all of the foregoing reasons, and even if sanctions are removed, it would take Iran 15-20 years to develop such a major export capability. This thesis offers recommendations to policy makers to conduct comprehensive economic analyses over costs and benefits of allocating gas to domestic and export markets, while giving due consideration to the pressing issue of ‘welfare maximisation’ and distributional impact of consuming gas domestically.