Research
The opinions expressed on this website and in my research and talks are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of the International Monetary Fund (Washington, D.C.).
The opinions expressed on this website and in my research and talks are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of the International Monetary Fund (Washington, D.C.).
Working papers
The Effects of Subsidies Along Supply Chains (Job Market Paper)
Best Graduate student paper at the 2023 SETC Conference (FREIT) and Runner-up at UNCTAD-AIB 2022 Award for Research on Investment and Development.
The increasing use of industrial policy by governments worldwide raises concerns about its trade implications. In this paper, I study the effects of US politically motivated subsidies on exports, both directly (in subsidized industries) and indirectly (in industries connected through domestic input-output linkages). To this end, I use a unique dataset on federal subsidies introduced by the United States from 2000 to 2019. To identify the causal effects of subsidies on exports, I exploit exogenous political shocks driven by changes in the identity of swing states across electoral terms. I find that politically motivated subsidies foster exports in industries directly and indirectly exposed to them. While subsidies are typically associated with price suppression, I find that these subsidies increase input prices. Additionally, they spur investment in subsidized industries and lead to productivity gains in vertically connected industries. This analysis contributes to the ongoing debate on reforming multilateral trading rules on subsidies by providing insights into how subsidies spill over along supply chains.
Stock Market Response to Firms’ Misconduct
Labor rights violations and environmental challenges have increased societal pressure on firms to meet sustainability standards. Using a novel dataset of worldwide industrial disasters, I examine whether firms identified by the media as involved suffer systematic stock market losses following these events. I estimate an average decline in price returns of 1.47 percentage points on the day after the disaster and 3.21 percentage points over the following week. Additionally, stock volatility increases. I discuss the possible mechanisms behind this negative market response. I find that harm to reputation for sustainability accounts for part of the stock market decline. Through a sentiment analysis of the news, I show that a more negative media tone is linked to greater stock market losses for firms involved in industrial disasters.
Under the Spotlight: CSR Choices and Fragile Supply Chains (with Flavia Cifarelli)
With the growing interest of civil society in socially responsible value chains, firms face the challenge of verifying compliance with working and environmental standards by their international suppliers. In this paper, we study the firm's choices in determining monitoring efforts and the number of suppliers. We model the theoretical trade-off between building larger, more resilient supply chains and the higher monitoring costs they entail. We provide empirical evidence supporting the theoretical predictions of the model. Using sector-level data on imports, child labour incidence, and NGO campaigns, the paper suggests that the network's size decreases with increasing societal attention and a higher proportion of clean suppliers in the economy.
Work in progress
Lobbying and Counter-Lobbying on Trade Protection (with Paola Conconi, Aksel Erbahar, and Lorenzo Trimarchi)
We study lobbying in favor of and against the most widely used trade barrier – antidumping (AD) duties. We combine detailed information from lobbying reports filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act with data on US AD duties and ITC hearings to construct a unique dataset that allows us to identify all firms that lobbied on US AD petitions and sunset reviews during 2008-2020. We document lobbying efforts in favor of AD protection (by import-competing US firms) and against it (by US downstream firms and foreign firms targeted by the duties). We study the effects of these efforts on antidumping policy outcomes. We use an instrumental variable approach to address endogeneity concerns, exploiting exogenous changes in the political connections of “potential lobbyists and counter-lobbyists” with members of the key trade committees in Congress.
Lobbying Against Free Markets: The Political Economy of Rising Concentration in US Markets (with Marco Grotteria, Lorenzo Trimarchi, Daniele Verdini)
Over the past three decades, competition in US markets has been declining. In this paper, we investigate the impact of political activism by major corporations on the increase in industry concentration and rising market power. We build a novel dataset that combines detailed information on all US competition policy cases and related firms’ lobbying activities. We use this dataset to provide insights into the influence of lobbying and political connections in shaping the increasing industry concentration and rising market power in the United States.