Search Results
Report
Who Collaborates with the Soviets? Financial Distress and Technology Transfer During the Great Depression
We provide evidence that financial distress induces firms to sell their technology to foreign competitors. To do so, we construct a novel, spatial panel dataset by individually researching and locating U.S. firms who signed Technology Transfer Agreements (TTAs) with the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s in various U.S. counties. By relating the number of TTAs signed in each county to the number of bank failures, we establish a significant, positive relationship between financial distress and the number of firms signing TTAs with the Soviet Union. Our findings suggest that banking panics ...
Working Paper
Shortages of Critical Goods in a Global Economy: Optimal Trade and Industrial Policy
This paper studies the role for optimal trade and industrial policy to mitigate shortages of critical goods following global shocks. We develop a dynamic model of trade with producers of essential and non-essential goods owned by heterogeneous households under incomplete markets. Shocks that increase global demand for critical goods lead to underinvestment relative to an economy with a representative household or complete markets. Trade exacerbates the shock as producers reallocate domestic sales toward exports. Shortages can be mitigated, increasing welfare, by taxing exports while ...
Working Paper
Shortages of Critical Goods in a Global Economy: Optimal Trade and Industrial Policy
This paper studies shortages of critical goods in a global economy and the role for policy. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model of trade with producers of essential and non-essential goods owned by heterogeneous households under incomplete markets. A global increase in demand for critical goods increases prices and production, but there is underinvestment relative to an economy with a representative household or complete markets. Trade exacerbates the shock as producers reallocate domestic sales toward exports. Shortages can be mitigated, increasing welfare, by taxing exports while ...