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Discussion Paper
Assessing the Extent of Trade Fragmentation
Globalization increased steadily for decades following the end of World War II, with trade as a percentage of global GDP rising from 20 percent in the early post-war period to nearly 60 percent just before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) (Aiyar et al., 2023). Since the GFC, however, this move toward globalization has stalled, and recent events—U.S.-China trade tensions, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine—have raised the prospect of a reversal.
Working Paper
Plant-level responses to antidumping duties: evidence from U.S. manufacturers
This paper describes the effects of a temporary increase in tariffs on the performance and behavior of U.S. manufacturers. Using a dataset that includes the full population of U.S. manufacturing plants, I show that an apparent positive correlation between antidumping duties and traditional revenue productivity is likely misleading. For the subset of plants reporting quantity-based output data, increases in prices and markups artificially inflate the effect of antidumping duties on revenue productivity, while physical productivity actually falls. Moreover, antidumping duties allow ...
Working Paper
Are all trade policies created equal? empirical evidence for nonequivalent market power effects of tariffs and quotas
Over the past 50 years, the steel industry has been protected by a wide variety of trade policies, both tariff- and quota-based. We exploit this extensive heterogeneity in trade protection to examine the well-established theoretical literature predicting nonequivalent effects of tariffs and quotas on domestic firms' market power. Using plant-level Census Bureau data for steel plants from 1967-2002, we find evidence for significant market power effects for binding quota-based protection, but not tariff-based protection, particularly with respect to integrated and minimill steel producers. Our ...
Working Paper
The Surprisingly Swift Decline of U.S. Manufacturing Employment
This paper finds a link between the sharp drop in U.S. manufacturing employment beginning in 2001 and a change in U.S. trade policy that eliminated potential tariff increases on Chinese imports. Industries where the threat of tariff hikes declines the most experience more severe employment losses along with larger increases in the value of imports from China and the number of firms engaged in China-U.S. trade. These results are robust to other potential explanations of the employment loss, and we show that the U.S. employment trends differ from those in the E.U., where there was no change in ...
Discussion Paper
Some Characteristics of the Decline in Manufacturing Capacity Utilization
In this note, we provide several observations regarding trends in manufacturing capacity utilization rates using data from the Federal Reserve Board and the Census Bureau. The note does not aim to consider all potential explanations for the decline in utilization rates, and indeed we do not find a single root cause of the decline. We do, however, attempt to narrow the scope of potential explanations and contribute contemporary data to the existing commentary.
Working Paper
Investment Responses to Trade Liberalization : Evidence from U.S. Industries and Establishments
This paper examines the effect of a change in U.S. trade policy on the domestic investment of U.S. manufacturers. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we find that industries more exposed to reductions in import tariff uncertainty exhibit relative declines in investment after the change in trade policy. Within industries, we find that this relationship is concentrated among establishments with low initial levels of labor productivity, capital intensity and skill intensity. For plants with high initial levels of skill intensity, we find that increased exposure is ...
Discussion Paper
Assessing the Extent of Trade Fragmentation
Globalization increased steadily for decades following the end of World War II, with trade as a percentage of global GDP rising from 20 percent in the early post-war period to nearly 60 percent just before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) (Aiyar et al., 2023). Since the GFC, however, this move toward globalization has stalled, and recent events—U.S.-China trade tensions, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine—have raised the prospect of a reversal.
Discussion Paper
Trade Policy Uncertainty May Affect the Organization of Firms’ Supply Chains
Global trade policy uncertainty has increased significantly, largely because of a changing tariff regime between the United States and China. In this blog post, we argue that trade policy can have a significant effect on firms? organization of supply chains. When the probability of a trade war rises, firms become less likely to form long-term, just-in-time relationships with foreign suppliers, which may lead to higher costs and welfare losses for consumers. Our research shows that even in the absence of actual tariff changes, an increased likelihood of a trade war can significantly distort ...
Working Paper
Trade Liberalization and Mortality : Evidence from U.S. Counties
We investigate the impact of a large economic shock on mortality. We find that counties more exposed to a plausibly exogenous trade liberalization exhibit higher rates of suicide and related causes of death, concentrated among whites, especially white males. These trends are consistent with our finding that more-exposed counties experience relative declines in manufacturing employment, a sector in which whites and males are over-represented. We also examine other causes of death that might be related to labor market disruption and find both positive and negative relationships. More-exposed ...
Working Paper
A concordance between ten-digit U.S. Harmonized System codes and SIC/NAICS product classes and industries
While the relationship between international trade and domestic economic activity is an important topic in economics, research in this area has been slowed due to data limitations. In this paper we provide tools that improve the existing data in two ways. First, we develop an algorithm that yields concordances between the ten-digit Harmonized System (HS) codes used to classify products in U.S. international trade and the SIC and NAICS industry codes used to classify domestic economic activity. These concordances then yield novel time series of industry-level international trade data for the ...