Trade barriers, international business, and the environment

This dissertation consists of three chapters discussing the effects of changing trade barriers for Canadian firms and a final chapter investigating hazardous waste trade, one of the important environmental issues in international business. The first three chapters use simple theoretical structures and firm level data to examine the evolution of Canadian manufacturing following the tariff changes imposed by the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. Chapter one considers the influence of falling tariffs on firm survival, chapter two investigates how trade liberalization effects firm growth in terms of size and productivity, and the third chapter considers the implication of falling trade barriers for firm financial structure. The fourth chapter diverges from the first three to explore the determinants of international shipments in hazardous waste using a gravity model with factor endowment conditions and waste trade data from 89 countries.