| My thesis contains three sections that use economic theory to analyze government policies in the areas of international trade and public finance. The first paper models how individuals accumulate skills and how their skill choices lead them to select into different types of occupations which differ according to their remuneration of skill. In a small open economy this in turn determines the industrial structure of an economy. An analysis is then carried out of the impact of taxation, technological change and trade on the amount of skill accumulated in an economy and on the income distribution.; Using a model of imperfect information and consumer learning, the second paper first models why a foreign firm would wish to dump its product into the domestic market. A low initial price is instituted because the foreign firms' product is unknown in the home country. A low price encourages domestic consumers to experiment with this product. An analysis is then conducted regarding the welfare effects of antidumping policies on the national welfare of countries that introduce such measures.; The third section examines taxation when household production is present and, in particular, examines the optimal taxation of inputs into household production. The first section examines the impact of fixed costs in household production on the pattern of optimal taxation. The presence of such fixed costs implies that a narrowly based tax, such as the Manufacturers' Sales Tax, would be preferred to a more comprehensive GST. The second section uses a similar framework to examine the impact of the exemption of food in the GST where food is treated as an input good into household meal provision. Taxing food heavily would offset the tax free nature of time spent in household production. |
