257 research outputs found
Essays on International Trade and Industrial Organization
No full textThis thesis contains three papers examining topics related to international trade and industrial organization. In Chapter 1, I develop a flexible methodology that uses profit maximization conditions to solve for unobserved input allocations, TFP, and quality across product lines in multi-product plants. I apply this methodology to a panel of plants manufacturing machinery in India from 2000-2007. I find that there is substantial variation in both TFP and quality across product lines within a given plant, and that quality and quantity based TFP (TFPQ) are negatively correlated. Finally, I find that increases in Chinese import competition led plants to reallocate their inputs towards higher quality products and away from their high TFPQ products, thereby generating within plant quality improvements, rather than productivity gains. In Chapter 2, which is based on joint work with Daniel Ershov and Jean-William Lalibert\'{e}, we use consumer level data from Nielsen to look at two products with natural demand complementarities and a history of regulatory activity - potato chips and carbonated soda pop. We estimate a discrete choice model that allows for demand complementarity across pop and chips, using a novel estimator that leverages information on bundle specific purchases from consumer micro data, as well as aggregate scanner data. We then simulate a number of anti-trust counterfactuals in the chips and carbonated soda market. Once demand complementarity is taken into account, a merger between the chips and soda producer PepsiCo/Frito-Lay and the soda producer Dr. Pepper will reduce chip prices. Soda prices will either increase or fall, depending on the market. By contrast, the standard discrete choice model predicts that soda prices would always increase following the merger. In Chapter 3, which is based on joint work with Daniel Trefler and Miaojie Yu, we review some recent methods for estimating productivity. We apply these methods to Chinese manufacturing data for 2000-2006, with the goal of determining the strengths and pitfalls of the various approaches. We find that irrespective of the approach used to estimate productivity, gross output production functions generate more sensible estimates than value added production functions.Ph.D
Essays on International Trade and Industrial Organization
No full textThis thesis contains three papers examining topics related to international trade and industrial organization. In Chapter 1, I develop a flexible methodology that uses profit maximization conditions to solve for unobserved input allocations, TFP, and quality across product lines in multi-product plants. I apply this methodology to a panel of plants manufacturing machinery in India from 2000-2007. I find that there is substantial variation in both TFP and quality across product lines within a given plant, and that quality and quantity based TFP (TFPQ) are negatively correlated. Finally, I find that increases in Chinese import competition led plants to reallocate their inputs towards higher quality products and away from their high TFPQ products, thereby generating within plant quality improvements, rather than productivity gains. In Chapter 2, which is based on joint work with Daniel Ershov and Jean-William Lalibert\'{e}, we use consumer level data from Nielsen to look at two products with natural demand complementarities and a history of regulatory activity - potato chips and carbonated soda pop. We estimate a discrete choice model that allows for demand complementarity across pop and chips, using a novel estimator that leverages information on bundle specific purchases from consumer micro data, as well as aggregate scanner data. We then simulate a number of anti-trust counterfactuals in the chips and carbonated soda market. Once demand complementarity is taken into account, a merger between the chips and soda producer PepsiCo/Frito-Lay and the soda producer Dr. Pepper will reduce chip prices. Soda prices will either increase or fall, depending on the market. By contrast, the standard discrete choice model predicts that soda prices would always increase following the merger. In Chapter 3, which is based on joint work with Daniel Trefler and Miaojie Yu, we review some recent methods for estimating productivity. We apply these methods to Chinese manufacturing data for 2000-2006, with the goal of determining the strengths and pitfalls of the various approaches. We find that irrespective of the approach used to estimate productivity, gross output production functions generate more sensible estimates than value added production functions.Ph.D
Replication Files for "How Do Endowments Determine Trade? Quantifying the Output Mix, Factor Price, and Skill-Biased Technology Channels" by Peter Morrow and Daniel Trefler
No full textReplication Files for "How Do Endowments Determine Trade? Quantifying the Output Mix, Factor Price, and Skill-Biased Technology Channels" by Peter Morrow and Daniel Trefler in the Journal of International Economics.THIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOV
Much Ado About Nothing: American Jobs and the Rise of Service Outsourcing to China and India
No full textWe examine the impact on U.S. labor markets of offshore outsourcing in services to China and India. We also consider the reverse flow or 'inshoring' which is the sale of services produced in the United States to unaffiliated buyers in China and India. Using March-to-March matched CPS data for 1996-2006 we examine the impacts on (1) occupation and industry switching, (2) weeks spent unemployed as a share of weeks in the labor force, and (3) earnings. We precisely estimate small positive effects of inshoring and smaller negative effects of offshore outsourcing. The net effect is positive. To illustrate how small the effects are, suppose that over the next nine years all of inshoring and offshore outsourcing grew at rates experienced during 1996-2005 in business, professional and technical services i.e., in segments where China and India have been particularly strong. Then workers in occupations that are exposed to inshoring and offshore outsourcing (1) would switch 4-digit occupations 2 percent less often, (2) would spend 0.1 percent less time unemployed, and (3) would earn 1.5 percent more. These are not annual changes – they are changes over nine years – and are thus best described as small positive effects.
Development-Related Biases in Factor Productivities and the HOV Model of Trade
No full textPast empirical failures of the basic Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek (HOV) model related to the inability of data to meet its restrictive assumptions, particularly identical international technologies and factor price equalization. Trefler (1993) tried to resuscitate HOV by introducing a simple Hicks-neutral (HN) factor-productivity adjustment, an approach that was heavily criticized. In this paper, we re-examine the productivity question by estimating factor-specific productivities from the individual technology data of multiple countries. Using a dataset of 29 countries, both developed and developing, we find evidence of factor-augmenting technological differences. In particular, the factor-productivity adjustment works well for developed members of the OECD. Further, we find that the ratios of factor productivities are strongly correlated with corresponding factor endowments. This systematic bias implies that the ability of HOV to explain North-South factor trade depends both on relative factor abundance and factor-augmenting productivity gaps.Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek, factor trade, productivity
Human Capital Investment and the Gender Division of Labor
No full textWe use a model of human capital investment and activity choice to explain facts describing gender differentials in the levels and returns to human capital investments. These include the higher return to and level of schooling, the small effect of healthiness on wages, and the large effect of healthiness on schooling for females relative to males. The model incorporates gender differences in the level and responsiveness of brawn to nutrition in a Roy-economy setting in which activities reward skill and brawn differentially. Empirical evidence from rural Bangladesh provides support for the model and the importance of the distribution of brawn.brawn, health, schooling, gender
Three Essays in International Trade
No full textThis thesis presents three papers on international trade. The first chapter examines how trade liberalization affects firms when labor market institutions differ across countries. One would expect the country with higher labor costs to have a lower proportion of firms that enter the export market. That need not be the case when labor market institutions differ across countries. Different distortions affect the mark-up charged by firms in a heterogeneous manner. Since the distortions differ across countries, so do the mark-ups. I use this finding to show that trade liberalization can lower the survival cut-off and the average productivity of active firms in one of the countries, two of the results that are central to the canonical Melitz (2003) model.The second chapter studies the affiliate location decision of multinational corporations (MNCs). Using hand-collected data on French MNCs, I find that they are more likely to opt for a wholesale affiliate relative to a manufacturing affiliate in more distant countries. I show theoretically and confirm empirically that this result is due to the fact that MNCs locate their wholesale affiliates in geographic proximity to their manufacturing affiliates. The former thereby serve as conduits to the exports of the latter, rather than to the exports of the parent company.The third chapter studies firms' export market entry decision. Using data on Peruvian firms, I find that the Great Recession did not reduce the number of new exporters. This appears to contradict the belief that large fixed costs are the primary barrier to export market participation. I show that two temporary marginal cost shocks can explain continued entry: an inventory draw-down and a fall in shipping costs. This indicates that firms can test out export markets in response to temporary marginal cost shocks, and cast doubt upon the large fixed cost hypothesis.Ph.D
Essays in International Trade and Innovation
No full textThis thesis contains three chapters that investigate issues in international trade and innovation. The first chapter examines government-backed technologies promoted in an international standard-setting organization (SSO) and their impacts on global innovation. Standardization ensures compatibility but can steer innovation by locking in specific technologies. Unlike other countries, the Chinese government coordinates its firms to advance specific domestic technologies in international SSOs. I study the impact of this policy on the direction of global innovation in 5G. In the SSO for 5G, firms compete to have their patented technologies adopted as part of the 5G standards. Using a large language model, I build a new database linking SSO technical documents, 5G policy documents published by the Chinese government, and 5G patents. I show that the policy promotes Chinese technologies in areas where China lags behind foreign competitors. If adopted as standards, these lagging technologies become the basis for subsequent 5G innovation across countries. These follow-on patents account for two-fifths of total 5G patents filed worldwide after standardization.
In the second chapter, I develop a trade model that incorporates cross-country differences in cost and risk profiles to analyze how risk-averse firms make optimal sourcing decisions considering both cost minimization and risk diversification. Firms are incentivized to minimize expected costs by sourcing from the lowest-cost suppliers, while also reducing profit variance by sourcing additionally from higher-cost alternatives. Calibrating the model to U.S. import data, I show that risk diversification explains 30% of the observed variation in U.S. import shares across countries for intermediate inputs.
The third chapter, based on joint work with John Lester, studies technology spillovers from firms performing research and development (R&D) in Canada and their implications for size-based R&D policies. Using panel data covering all firms performing R&D in Canada, we estimate the external return to R&D by size of firm, defining the spillover pool using a measure of technological proximity based on firms' reported expenditure in 147 research fields. We find that spillovers rise with the size of R&D performers, so Canada's policy of subsidizing R&D performed by small firms at a higher rate is not warranted.Ph.D
Three Essays in International Trade
No full textThis thesis presents three papers on international trade. The first chapter examines how trade liberalization affects firms when labor market institutions differ across countries. One would expect the country with higher labor costs to have a lower proportion of firms that enter the export market. That need not be the case when labor market institutions differ across countries. Different distortions affect the mark-up charged by firms in a heterogeneous manner. Since the distortions differ across countries, so do the mark-ups. I use this finding to show that trade liberalization can lower the survival cut-off and the average productivity of active firms in one of the countries, two of the results that are central to the canonical Melitz (2003) model.The second chapter studies the affiliate location decision of multinational corporations (MNCs). Using hand-collected data on French MNCs, I find that they are more likely to opt for a wholesale affiliate relative to a manufacturing affiliate in more distant countries. I show theoretically and confirm empirically that this result is due to the fact that MNCs locate their wholesale affiliates in geographic proximity to their manufacturing affiliates. The former thereby serve as conduits to the exports of the latter, rather than to the exports of the parent company.The third chapter studies firms' export market entry decision. Using data on Peruvian firms, I find that the Great Recession did not reduce the number of new exporters. This appears to contradict the belief that large fixed costs are the primary barrier to export market participation. I show that two temporary marginal cost shocks can explain continued entry: an inventory draw-down and a fall in shipping costs. This indicates that firms can test out export markets in response to temporary marginal cost shocks, and cast doubt upon the large fixed cost hypothesis.Ph.D
Essays in Internationsl Political Economy
No full textThis dissertation studies three important questions in international political economy:
The long run consequences of social divisions created by historical colonialism, the importance of trade shocks in shifting political power balances and shaping institutional development and the influence that major political powers have over the decisions
of smaller nations. I study these three questions empirically in four papers that
span three distinct regions and time periods. The first paper asks whether the large differences in economic development across Native American reservations today can
be explained by social divisions that were created more than 150 years ago when the
US government forcibly integrated distinct Native American bands into shared reservations, condemning them to a system of shared governance that was not consistent
with their political traditions and tribal identities. The second and third papers study
the effect of the first globalization on the political and economic equilibrium in seventeen 19th century British Caribbean plantation colonies. I use this set of highly comparable but in precise ways distinct islands as a laboratory to study the effect of globalization on the long run development of representative institutions and on the coerciveness of labour markets at the time. The first of two papers provides insights
into the working of colonial institutions and traces the mechanisms through which
the planter elite managed to maintain a monopoly over policy making and retard
long run development. The second paper highlights the importance that exogenous output price changes had for the willingness of planter elites to engage in costly coercion that distorted labour markets in their favour. In the final paper I test whether major aid donors use foreign aid to buy the votes of developing countries. Taking advantage of a unique long-running dispute between major donors in the International Whaling Commission, I am able to address the three major empirical challenges in answering this question: that aid moves much slower than voting behaviour, that alliances
constantly change with issues and that most international organizations vote frequently and on a range of issues while data on aid disbursals is available only in yearly aggregates.Ph
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