Research

Working Papers

To thoroughly assess the costs of protectionist policies, one should account for the endogenous formation and destruction of trade relationships. I develop a general equilibrium framework with endogenous network formation where input supplier choices and quantities purchased determine the equilibrium network structure. I apply my framework to the US-China trade war to perform a counterfactual analysis. I identify where the network adjusts, with low productivity inputs or those with high tariffs dropped from production. I find evidence for reshoring, and trade diversion from the US to Mexico. I consider unilateral and homogeneous tariff increases, mapping out their distributional implications.

Presented at the 10th Warwick Economics PhD Conference (2022); Midwest International Trade & Theory, University of Notre Dame (2022); Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) (2023); Royal Economic Society (RES) and Scottish Economic Society (SES) Annual Conference (2023); Aarhus-Kiel Workshop (2023); 25th Göttinger Workshop "Internationale Wirtschaftsbeziehungen" Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (2024); GSC RETHINK (2024);  GEP/CEPR Conference (2024); 3rd Global Economic Networks Workshop (2024)*.


I document a set of novel stylized facts to study the relationship between the structure of the production network and export competitiveness. I find evidence for the small-world phenomenon - the average number of links separating any two sectors - is relatively low and holds at the level of the global trade network. Sectors in which a country has a revealed comparative advantage (RCA) tend to be more central in the production network, and sectors more connected domestically, tend to be more connected internationally. I also study how a sector’s network position may amplify or insure against potential losses in its future export competitiveness in response to negative final demand shocks. I test this hypothesis by constructing a shift-share instrument to isolate the exogenous variation in the change in sectors' global final demand, associated with the 2008 Financial Crisis. I find more central sectors experience a relatively smaller decline in their future RCA compared to their more peripheral counterparts. I also study the potential heterogeneous effects within my sample across  income levels and sectors to find it is primarily middle-income countries, such as the BRIC economies, and the manufacturing sector that reduce the negative effects of the final demand shock. This is consistent with evidence that the downturn was less persistent in emerging markets compared to the deep recession in industrial economies.

Presented at the University of Mainz International Brown Bag seminar (2020), Midwest International Trade & Theory, Georgia Tech (2023), Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) (2024)
*scheduled

Works in Progress

Publications