Abstract: I study mineral export restrictions, a policy increasingly used by resource-rich developing countries to promote downstream industrialization. I develop a general equilibrium model in which these restrictions serve a dual purpose: improving the terms of trade and implicitly subsidizing downstream manufacturing by lowering domestic mineral prices. In a setting with multiple production stages, the latter role creates a policy dilemma. While the subsidy is strongest in industries immediately downstream of the restricted mineral, welfare gains depend on expansion in later stages closer to final demand. Using a novel global dataset of mineral export restrictions combined with product-level upstream-downstream linkages, I show the dilemma binds: downstream export gains are concentrated in the first processing stage and in base metals, but attenuate rapidly along the value chain and disappear for technologically complex and input-intensive products. Overall, mineral export restrictions can generate narrow downstream expansion but do not deliver the broad-based industrial upgrading that many developing-country governments envision.

[SSRN Working Paper]

Selected Presentations: ETSG 2025 Conference (Milan), AEA 2026 Annual Meeting (Philadelphia), 18th FIW Research Conference (Vienna), Junior Applied Economics Seminar (LSE), CSAE 2026 Annual Conference (Oxford), Midwest Trade Conference (Ohio State), 1st ISSCAD Global South Development Conference (Beijing), STEG 2027 Themed Workshops* (Manchester).

Abstract: While trade liberalization fueled China's spectacular economic growth, it simultaneously induced a relative decline in another China: regions lying outside the manufacturing core. Exploiting the sharp reduction in trade policy uncertainty (TPU) in U.S. markets following China's WTO accession, I find a stark spatial divergence. Benefits accrued exclusively to core counties with high initial industrial capacity. In the periphery, however, greater trade exposure led to a relative decline in manufacturing activity and uneven structural change. While the core diversified its industrial base, periphery counties failed to absorb labor released from agriculture and instead experienced industrial downgrading. I rationalize these patterns using a heterogeneous-firm spatial general equilibrium model, in which the shape parameter of local productivity distributions governs regional responses to trade shocks. The model shows that a uniform trade liberalization can generate divergent outcomes across space, as internal migration amplifies the initial productivity advantage of industrialized regions, reinforcing manufacturing concentration.

[SSRN Working Paper]

Selected Presentations: RES 2024 PhD Conference (Portsmouth), 18th RGS Doctoral Conference (Dortmund), The Economics and Politics of Inequality in China Conference (Manchester), UEA 2026 European Meeting (Barcelona), 13th RUSE Conference (Beijing).