Abstract: This paper examines mineral export restrictions as an industrial policy tool to promote downstream industrial upgrading. The imposition of such restrictions leads to a sharp and persistent decline in exports of targeted minerals. While downstream exports rise in both value and quantity, these gains dissipate rapidly along the value chain and are largely confined to basic metal products, the immediate downstream sector. There is no significant export-stimulating effect for technologically complex goods or for products that rely on extensive complementary inputs. Moreover, countries tend to deepen specialization in downstream products in which they already hold a comparative advantage, rather than diversifying into new product lines. Overall, while mineral export restrictions can generate sector-specific downstream gains, they are insufficient to induce the broader industrial upgrading that many developing country governments envision.

[SSRN Working Paper (Dec 25)]

Presentations: CSAE Research Workshop (Oxford), Junior Research Day 2025 Spring (QMUL), 15th International Conference on Economics of Global Interactions (Bari), ETSG 2025 Conference (Milan), 8th UKTPO Annual Conference (London), ASSA 2026 Annual Meeting (Philadelphia), 18th FIW Research Conference* (Vienna), Junior Applied Economics Seminar* (LSE), CSAE 2026 Annual Conference* (Oxford).

Abstract: While trade liberalization fueled China’s spectacular economic growth, this paper argues that it simultaneously induced a relative decline in another China: regions lying outside the country's 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 initial industrial capacity. In the agrarian periphery, however, greater trade exposure slowed manufacturing growth and led to uneven structural change. When the core diversified into high-complexity manufacturing industries, periphery counties failed to absorb labor released from agriculture and experienced industrial downgrading. To rationalize these patterns, I develop a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms, in which the shape parameter of local productivity distributions governs regional adjustment to trade shocks. Therefore, a uniform trade liberalization can generate sharply different outcomes across space, reinforcing manufacturing concentration in already industrialized regions.

New version coming soon...

Presentations: RES 2024 PhD Conference (Portsmouth), 18th RGS Doctoral Conference (Dortmund), The Economics and Politics of Inequality in China Conference (Manchester).