Job Market Paper
Job Market Paper
The Geography of Trade Shocks: Market Access and the Redistribution of Employment Losses
with Priyam Verma
Presentations. PSE-CEPR Policy Forum (June 2026, poster), RIEF Network (June 2026), 24th Annual GEP/CEPR (April, 2026), ADRES, Pantheon-Sorbonne (Jan 2026), Oldenburg Economics Department (November, 2025), UEA Montreal (Oct 2025), Economics of Global Interaction (Sept 2025)
Abstract. We develop an econometric framework that combines structural exposure measurement with reduced-form estimation to recover first-order general-equilibrium employment effects of trade shocks. Translating market access from quantitative trade models into the right-hand side of a reduced-form employment regression, we capture how import competition translates into local market access losses and how those losses propagate through domestic input–output and trade linkages. We implement the framework under two specifications: a pooled specification imposing a common transmission coefficient from import shocks to market access losses across sectors, and a heterogeneous specification that identifies sector-specific transmission. We apply both to the China Shock across 722 U.S. commuting zones and 22 sectors. First-order general-equilibrium propagation attenuates the average employment effect by 14 percent under the pooled specification and 20 percent under the heterogeneous specification, but fundamentally reshapes its geographic incidence: rank correlations with the Bartik benchmark fall as low as 0.48, and 50 percent of region-sector pairs are reclassified as net winners. Only 16 percent of region-sector pairs fall in the same quartile under both measures, and 95 percent of those in the worst-affected GE quartile are missed by Bartik-based targeting. In a horse race, the two structural classifications jointly absorb the predictive content of the Bartik measure for realized employment and unemployment outcomes.
Previous title: General Equilibrium Effects of Trade Shocks: A Market Access Approach.
Trade and Protectionist Backlash: The Redistributive Role of Democracy
European Economic Review, Volume 185, May 2026, 105295
Presentations. CEPII (2025), Annual Research Conference, European Commission, Ispra, Italy (2024), ETSG (2024), EDGE Jamboree (2024), Bocconi Trade Tea seminars (2024), Bocconi Politics and Institutions seminar (2024), RIEF Bruxelles (2023), LAGV (2023), AMSE PhD seminar (2023), PSE trade summer school (2022), ADRES (2022), LAGV (2022), ASSET (2022), AMSE PhD seminar (2022)
From Ballots to Beliefs: Short- and Long-Term Effects of Development Projects
[Draft available under request]
Abstract. We investigate the impact of foreign aid on democratic engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on electoral participation and individual attitudes toward democracy. To understand how development aid affects turnout, we analyze subnational lower-house electoral data from 19 African countries, combined with a comprehensive dataset of World Bank and Chinese-funded projects spanning 2000–2021. Using a regression discontinuity design based on project completion timing relative to election dates, we find that the completion of aid projects before elections significantly reduces voter turnout. This decline may be driven by perceptions of foreign aid as a threat to national sovereignty rather than a tool for development. To further explore this, we plan to examine whether long-term exposure to aid projects erodes trust in local governments and shapes support for democracy using survey data from 34 African countries.
Violence and the Origins of Patriarchal Institutions
Offshoring, Technology Spillovers, and Comparative Advantage