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Replication data for: "Information and Legislative Bargaining: The Political Economy of U.S. Tariff Suspensions"
No full textReplication data for: "Information and Legislative Bargaining: The Political Economy of U.S. Tariff Suspensions
Replication data for: "Information and Legislative Bargaining: The Political Economy of U.S. Tariff Suspensions"
No full textReplication data for: "Information and Legislative Bargaining: The Political Economy of U.S. Tariff Suspensions
Essays in International and Innovation Economics
No full textPh.D.The first chapter of this dissertation introduces the motivation, explains the system of international patents, and then itemizes the structure of the research. As a nonmarket route of technology diffusion, international patent transfers account for an important channel of diffusion of new technologies. The aim of the dissertation is to analyze how intellectual property rights (IPR) and product complexity shape this channel of technology diffusion.In the second chapter, I analyze how firms decide to protect their innovations. Products have different technological complexity, and patenting decisions are made under different IPR enforcement. I simulate the model to characterize the set of patenting firms in terms of their productivity, under different country-industry characteristics.Simulations show a non-monotonicity in the use of patents. I test themodel using a subset of patents data from the European Patents Office from 2000 to 2010. The regressions confirm two hypothesis of the model: (i) international transfer of patents and technological complexity have an inverted U shape relation, and (ii) changes in IPR have a larger effect in patenting decisions when industries are located "in the middle" of the spectrum of technological complexity.The third chapter studies how foreign IPR affects innovation, in the form of productivity improvements, in industries with different levels of technological complexity. I use simple functional forms to derive the endogenous steady state distribution of firms and their innovation growth. I simulate the model to pin down the effects of expanding intellectual property protection. Simulations show a non-monotonicity in the effects of foreign countries strengthening IPR. As technological complexity increases, domestic firms innovate more when foreign IPR increases, and hence the average productivity of these industries increases. However, as complexity approachesto very high complex industries, this effect of stronger foreign IPR dissipates. I test these implications with an industry labor productivity measure from the STAN indicators of the OECD. Estimates support the main findings of the model
ESSAYS ON TARIFF PASS-THROUGH AND SPILLOVER EFFECT
No full textPh.D.Essay 1 is the first attempt to explore tariff pass-through at the firm level, and to investigate how it depends on firm heterogeneity in productivity and product differentiation in quality. Using an extended version of the Melitz and Ottaviano (2008) model, the essay shows that exporting firms absorb tariff changes by adjusting both their markups and product quality, which leads to an incomplete tariff pass-through. Moreover, the absolute value of tariff absorption elasticity negatively depends on firm productivity for products with high scope for quality differentiation, but positively depends on firm productivity for products with low scope for quality differentiation.Essay 2 studies how market structure impacts tariff pass-through. The essay explores this with a model in which both export firms and import firms have some market power. It shows that tariff pass-through is negatively related to the market power of export firms, but is ambiguously related to the market power of import firms. This is due to the impact of their market power on the markup distribution between export firms and import firms.Essay 3 studies how tariff changes of a country impact trade prices between its trade partners. The essay uses a simple model to show that, when a foreign country reduces its tariffs (either MFN or non-MFN tariffs), domestic exporting firms raise their prices toward third countries, which is referred to as "tariff spillover effect". The existence of the effect depends on the assumption of increasing marginal cost.The essays use the U.S. transaction-level export or import data and find empirical evidence for the predictions of the models
Essays on Multinational Firms: Strategic Trade Policy, Exporting, and Productivity
No full textPhDChapter 1 explores the possibility of strategic use of antidumping duties by multinational firms. There is evidence that the subsidiaries of some multinational firms file antidumping protection from their own parents or remain inactive during the investigation period while other firms pursue protection. Using a duopoly model, I analyze this phenomenon in a two-stage capacity-constrained price competition framework. I find that in most cases, the foreign multinational corporations benefit from the antidumping duties on themselves, which deter them from exporting, thus, reduce competition in the foreign market. In some cases, the outcome is ambiguous and is determined by the costs of exporting as well as the capacity decisions of the firms.Chapter 2 studies strategic import policy in a model of capacity-constrained price competition. I consider an environment of two firms, a domestic firm and a foreign multinational firm, both producing in the domestic country. The multinational firm is able to support its local production with exports from its parent plant. Imposition of a tariff by the domestic government improves the profits of the domestic firm as in standard models of strategic trade policy, confirming the profit-shifting effects of protectionist policies. However, when initial trade costs are low enough, the multinational firm also benefits from the tariff imposition, making the net change in total domestic welfare negative. When trade is costly and the degree of differentiation between firms' products is high enough, the gain in the domestic firm's profits outweighs the loss in the consumer surplus, resulting in a net welfare gain for the domestic country.Chapter 3 adds to the empirical evidence on the direction of causality between exporting and firm performance by using firm-level data from Indian manufacturing firms. Recent empirical studies have documented the superior characteristics of exporting firms relative to non-exporters using micro-level data. There are two main hypotheses proposed to explain this gap. According to the self-selection hypothesis, it is the better firms that become exporters as these firms have a greater chance of covering the high fixed costs of serving foreign markets. The learning-by-exporting hypothesis suggests that entering export markets can result in post-entry productivity improvements. I find clear evidence on self-selection. To test the learning-by-exporting hypothesis, I use propensity score matching. Although the results indicate that there some benefits to exporting firms in the form of higher sales and capital, I do not detect any major further productivity improvements following entry into export markets
Essays on Trade Policies and Firm Performance in Developing Countries
No full textPh.D.Trade policies in developing countries have a significant impact on economic growth and welfare, especially after the trade liberation in China and India. The labor markets are highly influenced by different trade policies such as Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in China and the growing import competition in India. My dissertation focuses on understanding the effect of trade policies on firm behaviors and local labor markets in developing countries.My first chapter explains the stylized facts about SEZs and possible explanations for the performance of zone firms. I examine the firms’ sorting and exporting behavior under this policy. SEZ exporters have the highest productivity. Firms facing high imported intermediate tariffs will select themselves into domestic firms who locate in SEZs to avoid imported input tariffs; firms become non-SEZ exporters when their intermediate inputs tariffs are low. Compared with other types of firms, domestic non-zone firms have the lowest productivity. Empirically, firms with high productivity paying high fixed costs are more likely to enter SEZs and enjoy the imported input tariff exemptions.In my second dissertation chapter, I study a horizontal spillover effect of SEZs built in China and analyze their effects on firm productivity, wages, and labor market competition. The study shows that labor market competition is responsible for a negative spillover effect on surrounding non-zone firms. With positive assortative matching between worker skills and firm technology, SEZs shift the zone firm productivity upwards, increase wages, and are matched with a higher quality of labor. This results in a negative effect on non-zone firms with lower labor force quality and productivity. Consequently, while there is an overall positive welfare gain from SEZs, zone firms win and non-zone firms lose. The analysis shows the potential negative effects of SEZs in terms of income distribution and firm performance in many other developing countries.My last chapter, co-authored with Rubina Verma, examines the quantitative and qualitative impact of rising imports from China on the share of informal employment in registered Indian manufacturing enterprises. The results reveal that rising imports negatively affects the share of contract labor in firm employment by primarily increasing the number of permanent workers hired. While all firms witness an increase in the number of contract workers hired, those that are located in worker-biased labor regulation regimes see a decrease in permanent worker hiring while the firms located in employer-biased labor regulation regimes see an increase in permanent workers in their workforce
International Agreements on Trade in Government Procurement: Formation and Effect
No full textPh.D.Government procurement accounts for 14 to 19 percent of world GDP, and if entirely liberalized, could increase the value of world trade by up to 30 percent. However, governments commonly reserve the majority of their procurement markets for domestic suppliers, often erecting bureaucratic barriers to foreign firms' participation or offering domestic firms explicit price preference margins. This diversion to local firms creates scope for inefficiency. In recognition of this, recent years have seen the birth of public procurement agreements in which parties agree to accord each other's firms national treatment. These national treatment agreements (NTAs) include the plurilateral WTO Government Procurement Agreement with 43 signatory countries and an ever-expanding multitude of bilateral agreements.This dissertation examines the pattern of NTA formation among countries and their resulting trade and welfare effects. I develop a multi-country Ricardian model of procurement auctions in which firms decide to submit bids based on private-knowledge cost parameters drawn from country-specific distributions. Governments and are free to systematically disadvantage endogenously-determined classes of bidders in order to maximize social welfare. In the first chapter of the dissertation, I use numerical simulations to quantify the effects of NTAs on government expenditure, industry profits, and national welfare and to predict the pattern of NTA formation. I empirically test these predictions on data from 68 countries from 1990 to 2010. Simple sign tests correctly predict over 75 percent of all NTA relationships and extended regression results account for over 84 percent of all observed variation.In the second chapter, I extend the model to predict the volume of procurement trade between countries as a function of country-level productivity parameters and endogenous domestic preference margins. The model generates gravity-like estimating equations which I test empirically using U.S. data from 1996 to 2010. Results indicate that NTAs increase partners' procurement revenues by approximately 250 percent. However, these gains likely come from trade diversion
Essays on the Political Economy of Trade Policy and Trade Agreements
No full textPh.D.The first two chapters of this dissertation study the impact of the design of GATT/WTO trade agreements on the organization of domestic interest groups and explain several relevant empirical puzzles. Chapter 1 posits a model of trade policy formation, featuring endogenous firm participation in competing lobbies, and show that weak tariff bindings, as mandated by the GATT/WTO, serve to increase participation in the domestic pro-trade lobby and decrease applied tariffs. In the model the tariff ceiling works as an external constraint that reduces the off-the-equilibrium-path joint payoff of the government and the anti-trade lobby, thus reducing the contribution necessary for the pro-trade lobby to achieve a given applied tariff and thereby encouraging greater participation. The model explains the empirical puzzle, especially in small developing countries, that tariff caps even strictly above the applied tariffs tend to reduce the latter. We then extend the model to show that when a small country enters the negotiations towards a trade agreement, the pro-trade lobby group expands; and when the tariff cap stipulated by the trade agreement is imposed, the pro-trade lobby group expands further. Chapter 2 extends the model in the previous chapter to a setting with large countries. In the model countries can negotiate over a tariff cap that indirectly results in a desired level of applied tariff lower than the cap, and thereby eliminate the terms-of-trade externality with a positive "binding overhang". Furthermore, larger countries have lower binding overhangs. The model reconciles the discrepancy between the central role terms-of-trade motives should have played in designing GATT/WTO trade agreements and the implication of previous models that countries set unilateral optimal tariffs when the applied tariffs fall below the bound tariffs.The third chapter of this dissertation builds the firm selection channel in Melitz (2003) into the "protection for sale" model and yields novel predictions on the relationship between a sector's degree of firm heterogeneity and level of trade protection. We assume heterogeneous firms lobby the government for protection in the unilateral setting (as well as liberalization in the cooperative setting). A lower domestic tariff imposed on a sector will raise prices of the imported varieties and drive out relatively weaker foreign exporting firms, but will allow some less productive (and thus smaller) domestic ones to survive. In each sector, lobbying activities are (endogenously) dominated by larger firms that face the trade-off between driving out weaker foreign competitors (with a higher tariff) and weeding out less efficient domestic competitors (with a lower tariff). We are able to derive explicit formulas for the protection structures across different sectors, in both the unilateral and the cooperative setting. In particular, we link the "curvatures" of the productivity distributions of both domestic and foreign firms in a sector to the sector's endogenous tariff level. We find that how a sector's domestic firm heterogeneity impacts its protection level depends on whether the political economy consideration is dominant, and that how a sector's foreign firm heterogeneity affects its protection level hinges on whether the home government sets tariffs unilaterally or cooperatively
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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