Three Essays in Applied Economics

Abstract

Since the 1920s Iraq has experienced a prolonged period of war which has adversely affect the country's economic, affecting the political as well as social aspects of the lives of people living in the nation. This dissertation contains three chapters discussing issues related to the Iraqi economy. The first chapter focuses on source-specific demand elasticities of dates in international trade. In this chapter, a Rotterdam model is used to estimate demand elasticities for dates differentiated by place of production. Separate equations are estimated for the six major exporting countries, namely Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emigrants, Pakistan, and Rest of World; Results suggest imports demands are inelastic with respect to price and unitary elasticity with respect to total date expenditure for some countries. The demand for dates from the various exporting countries will grow at different levels along with the changes in total world expenditures on dates. An increase in the price of dates from a particular exporting country will increase the value of its dates in international trade. In the second chapter, we have examined the impact of armed conflicts/violence on health in Iraq. In this chapter, we used a nationally representative sample of the Iraqi population with an interview called the Iraq Household Socio-Economic Survey (IHSES) 2006-2007 and Iraq Body Count (IBC) datasets to investigate the impact of conflict on the health service of Iraq. Iraqi provinces considered in this paper as a natural experiment by divided provinces with high intensity of violence as a treaded group and low intensity of violence as a control group. After controlling for individuals, households, city, dwelling characteristics and comparing with the literature, the study concludes the following; first, we find that the expected mean change of health outcomes is affected by time treatment, specifically after 2003 for provinces with high-intensity violence level. Second, the children who are most likely to face violence are living in high-intensity provinces as opposed to those living in low-intensity violence provinces. Finally, health services are weak in all provinces of Iraq. Kids are getting bad health service (less vaccination) in all provinces. However the health service is becoming worse after the 2003 war, and that is clearly manifested in DID coefficients of high and medium provinces, but not in the low intensity violence provinces. In the third chapter, we estimate production factor demand elasticities with a particular focus on the oil sector in Iraq. Results from taking into account variation in the prices of inputs demand of the production function, using types of production function forms — for example, the Cobb-Douglas, the interaction production function, and the translog production function. We prefer the first model because it is the only model that provides significant coefficients. D.W. test indicates that there is no autocorrelation issue in this model. Moreover, model A provides more significant production elasticities compared to model B and C. The interpretation suggests that each one percent increase in the capital and labor inputs will result in a substantial effect on the size of GDP. The estimation of the production function is experiencing a constant return to scale, and the market is not competitive.