Abstract: This paper examines mineral export restrictions as an industrial policy instrument to promote downstream industrial upgrading. Combining global trade data, export restriction records, and product-level upstream–downstream linkages, I estimate how these restrictions affect exports of both targeted minerals and related downstream products. The imposition of restrictions leads to a sharp and persistent decline in mineral exports. While downstream exports increase in both value and quantity, the gains are confined to basic metal products and fade quickly further along the value chain. In particular, there is no measurable export‑stimulating effect for technologically complex products or those requiring extensive complementary inputs. Countries also tend to deepen specialization in downstream products where they already hold a comparative advantage, rather than expanding into new products. Overall, while mineral export restrictions can generate sector-specific downstream gains, they are insufficient to drive the broader structural transformation that many developing-country governments envision.

Draft available upon request.

Presentations: CSAE Research Workshop (Oxford), Junior Research Day 2025 Spring (QMUL), 15th International Conference on Economics of Global Interactions (Bari), ETSG 2025 Conference (Milan), ASSA 2026 Annual Meeting* (Philadelphia).

Abstract: The rise of China is often attributed to trade liberalization and export-led manufacturing growth. This paper, however, argues that trade openness also induced decline in another China: regions outside the country's manufacturing core. Exploiting variation in exposure to trade policy uncertainty (TPU) reduction in U.S. markets following China’s WTO accession, I find that TPU reduction stimulates manufacturing growth only in counties in the top quartile of pre-accession manufacturing employment share. Among other counties, those experiencing larger TPU reductions exhibit significantly and persistently slower manufacturing growth compared to counties with smaller exposure. These adjustments occur almost entirely along the extensive margin, consistent with trade models featuring firm heterogeneity. Moreover, counties connected to manufacturing hubs through migration networks suffer negative effects. While TPU reduction encourages labor to move out of agriculture, the pattern of structural change is also highly uneven across space. Taken together, these findings suggest that opening to trade may exacerbate pre-existing spatial inequality by concentrating manufacturing activities in already developed regions.

Draft available upon request.

Presentations: RES 2024 PhD Conference (Portsmouth), 18th RGS Doctoral Conference (Dortmund).