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Working Paper
Spoils of War: Trade Shocks and Segmented Labor Markets in Spain during WWI
How does intranational factor mobility shape the welfare effects of a trade shock? I provide evidence that during WWI, a demand shock emanated from belligerent countries and affected neutral Spain. Within Spain, labor predominantly reallocated locally, while the most affected provinces experienced drastic increases in wages and consumer prices. Embedding imperfect labor mobility in an economic geography model, I show that external demand shocks can improve allocative efficiency, but asymmetric shocks cause localized increases in wages and consumer prices instead of reallocation. Adjusting an ...
Working Paper
Economic Diversity and the Resilience of Cities
We show how local worker flow adjustment margins yield a theory-consistent sufficient statistic approximating the welfare effects of local shocks. Furthermore, we isolate a city’s insurance value as this approximation’s second-order term. Leveraging rich labor flows data across occupations, industries, and cities in France, we estimate spatial and non-spatial flows responses to local labor demand shocks. Less economically diverse French cities experience deeper contractions in gross outflows following negative shocks. In contrast, more economic concentration begets a modestly larger ...
Working Paper
Multimodal Transport Networks
The movement of goods from origin to destination takes place over multiple modes of transportation. Correspondingly, intermodal terminals play an important role in facilitating transportation over the multimodal network. This paper studies multimodal transport networks and their impact on infrastructure investments. We propose a tractable theory of transportation across domestic transportation networks with multiple modes of transportation by embedding multimodal routes into a spatial equilibrium model with endogenous stochastic route choice. We calibrate the model to US domestic freight ...
Working Paper
Multimodal Transport Networks
We examine the economic and environmental impacts of improvements and disruptions in multimodal transport networks. Our quantitative spatial equilibrium model incorporates routing over multiple modes and congestion at intermodal terminals. We estimate a modal substitution elasticity with highway and rail data and a terminal congestion elasticity with vessel-positioning data. Calibrated to the US freight network, our model identifies key bottlenecks and quantifies $300 million–$700 million in additional real GDP gains from intermodal terminal improvements. These gains are 2.5 times higher ...
Working Paper
Globalization and Heterogeneity: Evidence from Hollywood
Linder (1961) conjectured that taste differences could impede trade flows. We extend Krugman (1980) to allow for producers that face taste heterogeneity with volatile demand. Consumers are characterized by different taste over product attributes and idiosyncratic risk. Firms face a portfolio type of problem where they trade off supplying the largest consumer groups against higher exposure to group-specific risk. We develop an empirical strategy to estimate consumer taste from observed market shares across multiple distinct markets of the same product, as well as the key parameters that pin ...
Journal Article
Tariffs and Consumer Prices: Insights from Newly Matched Consumption-Trade Micro Data
We evaluate the impact of various US tariff scenarios on consumer prices using novel micro-level data linking imports to consumer expenditures. Results indicate that an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports, 25 percent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports, and 10 percent tariff on other countries could raise consumer prices on everyday retail purchases, such as food and beverage items and general merchandise, covering about a quarter of the total consumption basket, by 0.81 percent to 1.63 percent, assuming half to full pass-through. Notably, tariffs on Canada and Mexico ...