PhD defence of Julia Swart on Tuesday 29 May 2012

On Tuesday 29 May 2012 Julia Swart will defend her PhD thesis entitled 'Natural resources and the environment: implications for economic development and international relations'. Supervisor is Professor Philip Hans Franses.

Time and location

The PhD defence will take place in the Senate Hall of Erasmus University Rotterdam and will start at 11.30 hrs.

About the PhD thesis

This thesis explores four distinct questions relating natural and environmental resources, with international relations. To address these questions we take into perspective that: i. natural resources wealth can bring benefits in terms of economic growth and attraction of investments in sectors related to natural resources; ii. the effect of international flows of direct investment and trade on pollution depend on the development level of the countries engaged in these relations. Chapter 2 provides an econometric analysis of the determinants of the weight of resource-based sectors relative to natural resources sectors in Latin America. Chapter 3 analyses the impact of natural resources on M&As. Chapter 4 studies the impact of M&As and Multilateral Agreements on Carbon Dioxide emissions. In Chapter 5 we investigate the links between firm heterogeneity, intra-industry trade, and the environment.

Overall the evidence points to a weak linkage between M&As and natural resources. Resource-dependent countries attract less M&As. Moreover, receiving more M&As in resource-based sectors than natural resources sectors does not contribute to the relative enlargement of resource-based sectors. On the other hand linkages between M&As and pollution as well as between trade and pollution are significant. Furthermore, in these cases the linkages differ depending on the development level of the countries involved. While developing countries experience an increase in Carbon Dioxide emissions with inflow of M&As in pollution intensive sectors, developed countries experience a decrease. Trade with transportation cost, on the other hand, decreases total pollution (for reasonably small transportation cost) for both developing and developed country when pollution is local. In the simulation exercise the decrease in total pollution was slightly higher for developed countries. Thus, as a policy implication, the findings show that there is more opportunity to tackle pollution issues than to revert a resource-dependent specialization pattern.

About Julia Swart

Julia Swart obtained an MPhil in Economics from the Tinbergen Institute. Additionally, she has an MSc in Economics from the University of São Paulo. As a PhD student, Julia was a visiting researcher at the OxCarre at the Oxford University where she worked in one of the papers of this thesis. During her PhD she attended various workshops, conferences and seminars. Since January 2012, Julia is an Assistant Professor in Economic Sustainability at the Utrecht School of Economics.

About the Tinbergen Institute

The Tinbergen Institute is a joint research institute of the Erasmus School of Economics of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Amsterdam School of Economics of the University of Amsterdam and the Economics and Business Administration Faculty of the VU University Amsterdam.

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For more information about this ceremony, please contact Ronald de Groot, Communication Advisor of Erasmus School of Economics phone +31 10 408 1762, e-mail: rdegroot@remove-this.ese.eur.nl.