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]

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: 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), The Economics and Politics of Inequality in China Conference* (Manchester).