Publications:
Quid Pro Quo, Knowledge Spillovers, and Industrial Quality Upgrading: Evidence from the Chinese Auto Industry (with Panle Jia Barwick, Shengmao Cao and Shanjun Li). American Economic Review, 115(11), 3825–3852, 2025. VoxDev
Melons as Lemons: Asymmetric Information, Consumer Learning and Seller Reputation. The Review of Economic Studies, 92(6), 3574–3610, 2025. Online appendix
Collective Reputation in Trade: Evidence from the Chinese Dairy Industry (with Ludovica Gazze and Yukun Wang). The Review of Economics and Statistics, 104(6), 1121–1137, 2022. Online Appendix; VoxDev
Environmental Protection or Environmental Protectionism? Evidence from Tailpipe Emission Standards in China (with Shanjun Li, Danxia Xie and Hui Zhou). AEA Papers and Proceedings, 111, 381–385, 2021.
Returns to Work, Child Labor and Schooling: The Income vs. Price Effects (with Yukun Wang). Journal of Development Economics, 145, 102466, 2020. VoxDev.
Firm Growth and Corruption: Empirical Evidence from Vietnam (with Seema Jayachandran, Edmund J. Malesky and Benjamin A. Olken). The Economic Journal, 129(618), 651–677, 2019. VoxDev.
Working Papers:
Quality Incentives and Upgrading along Supply Chains: Experimental Evidence from Uganda (with Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Ameet Morjaria, Russell Morton and Yulu Tang).
Stand Out from the Millions: Information Frictions and Market Congestion on Global E-Commerce Platforms (with Maggie Chen, Jin Liu, Xiaosheng Mu and Daniel Xu). Links to: NBER Working Paper No. 28100; VoxDev
R&R, The Review of Economics and Statistics
Misperceptions and Product Choice: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Zambia (with David Sungho Park and Ajay Shenoy).
Work in Progress:
Search Costs and Firm-to-Firm Linkages: Experimental Evidence from Trade Fairs (with Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Federico Huneeus, Nicolas Jimenez, and Yuhei Miyauchi) [RCT complete; analysis ongoing]
Connections between firms are critical for economic growth, providing new business, opportunities to learn-by-doing, and access to higher-quality inputs. What prevents firms from forming these connections? One possibility is information frictions. Industrial trade fairs are a long-standing solution to such frictions, coordinating a centralized meeting point for buyers and suppliers. In partnership with the largest operator of industrial fairs in Chile, we run a two-sided randomized control trial at the country’s largest trade fairs (aquaculture and mining). On the supplier side, we subsidize randomly selected firms to host a booth at the fair; on the buyer side, we introduce randomly selected buyers to suppliers in randomized business meetings. This two-sided randomization distinguishes whether new connections crowd out incumbent suppliers or represent new aggregate business. Combining the experimental variation with detailed administrative tax data and firm surveys, we trace the direct effects on participants and the indirect effects on their competitors and trading partners. To assess the aggregate value of these new linkages, we build a structural model of firm-to-firm matching.
Export Promotion Along Supply Chains: Experimental Evidence from Rwanda’s Export Credit Guarantee Facility (with Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Christian Lippitsch, Ignacio Marra de Artiñano, and Stephen Nyarko) [RCT in the field]
Export-led growth has long been seen as a key to unlocking structural transformation. In pursuit of this goal, governments often use industrial policies such as state-guaranteed loans to alleviate that credit constraints that may prevent firms from making investments needed to access world markets. A central question for such policies is not only whether to intervene, but where along the supply chain to target support. In partnership with the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Development Bank of Rwanda, we run a randomized control trial of the Export Credit Guarantee Facility, which provides collateral guarantees on large loans (~$125k) to firms along export supply chains. Using administrative data to map firm-to-firm supply chains, we randomize whether we treat (i) upstream suppliers of exporters, (ii) downstream exporters, or (iii) both. Combining this administrative data with original firm surveys, we measure the direct impacts on treated firms, including total borrowing, exporting, and firm performance, as well as the spillovers along the supply chain. We use these direct and indirect effects to discipline a structural model of trade and credit constraints, providing an empirical test of theories on the optimal targeting of industrial policy in production networks.
Striving for Quality: The Impact of Certification on Market Access and Firm Networks in Rwanda (with Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Vittorio Bassi, Christian Lippitsch, Ignacio Marra de Artiñano, and Stephen Nyarko) [RCT in the field]
Certification can serve as a gateway to higher-value markets: by meeting stricter quality, safety, and regulatory standards, firms in low-income countries may gain entry to more demanding domestic and global supply chains, with productivity gains that propagate through supplier and buyer networks. And yet, despite its potential, existing evidence on the impact of certification is predominantly observational, making it hard to disentangle its causal effect. In partnership with the Rwanda Standards Board, we run a randomized control trial of Zamukana Ubuziranenge (“Striving for Quality”), a national program that provides technical assistance and subsidizes the certification fees for small and medium enterprises seeking product and system certifications, primarily for agricultural and agro-processed goods. Combining administrative tax data on the universe of firm-to-firm transactions with firm surveys and product quality testing, we ask three questions. First, what is the impact of certification on firms’ market access and performance, including sales, profits, employment, and exports? Second, does certification drive quality upgrading, or does it mainly signal existing quality? Third, how does certification reshape firms’ buyer-supplier networks, both shifting which partners they trade with and inducing quality upgrading among their existing suppliers and buyers?
Which Information Frictions Constrain Firm-to-Firm Linkages? Experimental Evidence from Rwanda (with Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Vittorio Bassi, Christian Lippitsch, and Ignacio Marra de Artiñano) [RCT launching soon]
Information frictions have long been thought to constrain firm-to-firm connections, but less is known about which type of friction matters: a buyer may easily observe the products a supplier offers, yet struggle to verify harder-to-observe characteristics such as the supplier’s capacity, reliability, or quality. In partnership with the Rwandan Ministry of Trade and Industry, we study a government platform that connects small and medium enterprises with buyers by drawing on administrative data to verify these otherwise hidden characteristics. Firms’ profiles display “badges,” automatically cross-verified in administrative tax and certification records, that document hard-to-observe aspects of a firm’s track record. We will run a randomized control trial that varies both access to the platform and the badges displayed on firms’ profiles. The badge variation identifies which of these characteristics trading partners value most. Linked to transaction-level data on the full firm-to-firm network, this design will shed light on the specific information frictions that constrain supply chain linkages, and on whether such platforms can help firms overcome them.
Platform-Generated Quality Ratings: Theory, Empirics and Welfare Implications (with Yanyou Chen, Daniel Xu, and Zhe Yuan). [Draft available upon request.]
In order to address the issue of asymmetric information and promote market regulation, digital platforms have implemented platform-generated rating (PGR) systems to provide quality information to the market. Unlike user-generated rating (UGR) systems, PGRs rely on platform-generated data including product quality, customer service, and logistics. To better understand the impact of PGRs, we conducted a study in collaboration with a large E-commerce platform, exploring both empirical and theoretical implications on consumer beliefs, sellers’ quality incentives, and market outcomes. Our empirical analysis utilized a regression-discontinuity method to examine customer response to high PGR sellers. Results indicate that customers tend to purchase more from high PGR sellers, suggesting that PGRs can be effective in signaling quality to consumers. We also found that the presence of a PGR system affects sellers’ quality incentives and the distribution of equilibrium quality. These findings demonstrate that PGRs have the potential to promote quality competition among sellers in the market. Finally, we conducted a counterfactual experiment to evaluate the welfare consequences of PGR adoption. Our (tentative) results suggest that PGR adoption can have a positive impact on overall welfare. Overall, our study highlights the potential benefits of PGRs in promoting market efficiency and enhancing consumer welfare.