Job Market Paper
Job Market Paper
The Geography of Trade Shocks: Market Access and the Redistribution of Employment Losses
with Priyam Verma
Presentations. RIEF Network (June 2026), 24th Annual GEP/CEPR Postgraduate Conference Nottingham (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 bridges the structural and reduced-form literatures to estimate general-equilibrium employment and wage effects of trade shocks. Translating market access from quantitative trade models into a tool for causal estimation, we estimate sector-specific elasticities governing how import competition maps into market access losses, and propagate the resulting effects through observed domestic input-output and trade linkages to construct a region-sector measure of equilibrium exposure - the Global Response. Applying the framework to the China Shock across 722 U.S. commuting zones and 22 sectors, we find that general-equilibrium adjustments modestly attenuate the average employment effect but fundamentally reshape its geographic incidence: the Bartik approach predicts that every region-sector pair loses, while the Global Response predicts that 51 percent are net winners. In contrast, the same adjustments amplify average wage losses, doubling the estimated effect relative to the partial-equilibrium benchmark. Spearman rank correlations between Bartik exposure and the Global Response fall as low as 0.43, indicating that general-equilibrium propagation substantially reorders which regions bear the burden of import competition.
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