Abstract: This paper examines the impact of export expansion on human capital investment in Vietnam induced by the U.S-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA). Using a rich household survey, I show that provinces more exposed to the tariff reduction from the BTA experienced a small decline in school attendance for children aged between 10-17 years old and a corresponding increase in children’s market work participation. This adverse BTA effect is on average stronger for boys, older children and households with low-educated head, indicating a dominating substitution effect that increases the opportunity costs of schooling. However, this masks a substantial heterogeneity across the gender-age dimension. Specifically, I find that while the BTA shock causes older boys to take market work for pay, it increases employment in household business for young girls and makes them substitute into domestic work.

Abstract: This study delves into the trade dynamics of Southeast Asian countries in response to the trade dispute between the United States (US) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Our analysis uncovers diverse patterns of trade diversion effects among eight Southeast Asian countries, revealing significant disparities in their reactions to this trade dispute. Specifically, we observe Viet Nam’s substantial export growth to both the US and the PRC, influenced by geopolitical uncertainties and strategic relocations. Thailand, on the other hand, experiences positive effects on its exports to the US, potentially due to trade diversion, alongside diminishing exports to the PRC. Moreover, we find sector-specific trends, such as an upsurge in machinery exports from Viet Nam, Thailand, and Indonesia. In contrast, Brunei  Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Singapore largely sustained their respective export levels to the US. Our findings highlight the importance of tailored trade policies that consider each Southeast Asian country’s unique industrial structure and degree of global value chain integration.

Abstract: This paper revises the shift-share measurement of regional exposure to trade liberalization by allowing the trade shock to transcend its local boundary through the pre-existing migration network. Leveraging the 2001 U.S-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) I provide a theory, and devise an empirical counterpart to argue for an important contribution of the migration-induced spillover effect from the BTA shock in (i) facilitating the structural transformation away from agriculture and toward industrialization, (ii) improving earnings among the low-educated workers, and (iii) narrowing the skill premium. Importantly, the direct effect of trade on labor reallocation nearly doubles when controlling for the spillover exposure. Further analysis on household spending and regional poverty shows that both exposures improve per capita expenditure for households with low-educated head and effectively reduce poverty incidence, albeit with some differential timing over the short and medium-run. In particular, while the direct effect reduces regional poverty immediately after the BTA implementation and quickly subsides in the subsequent years, the spillover effect gradually builds up over time and only turns significant by 2008.

Abstract: The resurgence of trade protectionism among global powers often poses a grave challenge to the economic advancement of developing countries. This paper offers novel evidence demonstrating how protectionists trade policies can inadvertently create unexpected economic benefits for a bystander developing nation, potentially serving as a springboard for structural transformation. Leveraging the episode of the US-China trade war, this study uncovers that Vietnam has experienced a significant increase in its exports to the US, through the channel of trade diversion opportunities arising from the trade conflict. We also find that new FDI projects in the manufacturing sectors hit by the trade war have increased by about 30% compared to other FDI destinations amid the trade war. More importantly, our analysis reveals that such unforeseen exposure to the trade war triggered significant structural transformation in Vietnam, manifested in (i) increased formality and skill upgrades at the firm level, (ii) mitigated labor market frictions through reallocation of high-skilled workers, and (iii) a labor shift from agriculture to manufacturing and informal to formal sectors in the regions more impacted by the trade war. This study highlights that the pathway toward structural transformation remains open for developing economies in the era of trade protectionism.

Abstract: This paper investigates the impacts of artisanal gold mining—the primary form of labor- intensive small-scale mining with hand tools—on intimate partner violence (IPV) against women in Sub-Saharan Africa, where female artisanal miners constitute a significant portion of the workforce. Exploiting cell-level spatial variation in gold suitability and an exogenous variation in international gold price for identification, we estimate the causal effects of artisanal gold mining conditional on industrial gold mines and other environmental shocks. Based on nationally representative data covering over 30 countries from the region, we find that less severe physical IPV experienced less frequently by women decreases mainly due to improvement in women’s bargaining power enhanced by an increase in their earning potential from extractive and sales or retail activities relative to husbands in response to the increased profitability of artisanal mining. The IPV-reducing short-run effects of artisanal gold mining, which are opposite from the impacts of industrial gold mining, tend to persist in the long term as its driving forces sustain over time. However, sexual IPV generally increases due to artisanal and industrial gold mining.

Abstract: Size-dependent policy is widely used to define a size threshold in which firms are required to comply to formal regulations, thus directly affecting one's decision to go formal and the size of the informal sector. In addition, the policy can have distortionary effect on agent's occupational choice and firm's allocation of resource, which is detrimental to the aggregate welfare. In this paper, I aim to assess these issues by studying a general equilibrium model  à la Lucas (1978) with taxation, imperfect enforcement, and size-dependent policy that imposes a labor threshold where the regulations start to bind. In the model, agents choose to be workers, informal or formal entrepreneurs and due to the size-dependent policy, there are three types of informal firms one can potentially become: micro-enterprises, bunching firms, and non-compliant firms. I then examine how a change in different policy parameters affects informality size as well as the reallocation of agents across the compositions within the informal sector. A numerical exercise is also conducted to assess the welfare-informality tradeoff when varying the threshold from low to high. I found that the size-dependent policy, although distortionary in terms of aggregate output production, can serve as a welfare-enhancing instrument while letting the informal sector expand at the same time. This is because establishments whose size below the threshold can operate efficiently and the policy helps to reduce the number of tax-evading firms, thus reducing the cost of compliance enforcement.