Inbound
Instinctive Commercial Peace Theorists? Interpreting American Views of the US-China Trade War
David Bulman
Business and Politics, December 2022, Pages 430-462
Abstract:
Existing theories of individual trade preferences do not satisfactorily explain how security concerns should affect American support for the US-China trade war that began in 2018. Although existing theories of public attitudes toward international trade -- economic self-interest, sociotropism, partisanship, reciprocity, and xenophobia -- all help to explain initial support for the trade war, these hypotheses do not adequately explain citizen attitudes in the context of an increasingly adversarial and securitized bilateral US-China relationship. In particular, they do not address how rising security tensions affect trade preferences. Using nationally representative original survey data (n = 1,016) and a nonrepresentative survey with an embedded experiment (n = 1,015), this article argues that securitization of the bilateral economic relationship has spurred threat perceptions and given rise to a Cold War narrative that has in turn caused a substantial share of Americans to become less concerned with the economic outcomes of trade and more concerned with trade's effect on security. These Americans demonstrate an instinctive “commercial peace” response, seeing trade liberalization as a potential deterrent to conflict. The results challenge conventional wisdom on political support for the trade war and add depth to existing theories of individual trade preferences regarding the interaction between economic, security, and psychological motivations.
The political globalization trilemma revisited: An empirical assessment across countries and over time
Michael Funke & Doudou Zhong
Economics & Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The political globalization trilemma asserts that a government cannot simultaneously opt for deep international integration, national sovereignty and democratic politics, but rather is constrained to choosing two of the three at most. This paper employs cross-country panel data operationalizing the multifaceted three vertices of the trilemma. After explorative data analysis, we employ panel error-correction techniques to uncover the mutual interdependencies among the variables in the system. The econometric evidence supports the existence of a long-run relationship between economic integration, national sovereignty and democratic politics as postulated in the political globalization trilemma.
Good Intentions Gone Bad? The Dodd-Frank Act and Conflict in Africa’s Great Lakes Region
Jeffrey Bloem
Economic Development and Cultural Change, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Dodd-Frank Act imposes reporting requirements on US companies regarding supply chain links to conflict minerals. Previous research uses within–Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) variation in the location of mineral mines to identify the act’s effect on conflict. Due to the presence of spillovers, these previous studies may underestimate the effect. Moreover, the act regulates reporting on minerals mined in the DRC and all surrounding countries. To fully evaluate this legislation, I estimate the effect on the prevalence of conflict events in the DRC and all covered countries. Difference-in-differences estimates suggest that the unintended consequences of this legislation within the DRC are larger than previously reported and that there is no evidence of any effect within all covered countries pooled together. Supplemental analyses (i) investigate possible mechanisms that drive these results and (ii) find that suspending enforcement of the legislation is unlikely to reduce conflict in the DRC.
Has China’s Young Thousand Talents program been successful in recruiting and nurturing top-caliber scientists?
Dongbo Shi, Weichen Liu & Yanbo Wang
Science, 6 January 2023, Pages 62-65
Abstract:
In this study, we examined China’s Young Thousand Talents (YTT) program and evaluated its effectiveness in recruiting elite expatriate scientists and in nurturing the returnee scientists’ productivity. We find that YTT scientists are generally of high caliber in research but, as a group, fall below the top category in pre-return productivity. We further find that YTT scientists are associated with a post-return publication gain across journal-quality tiers. However, this gain mainly takes place in last-authored publications and for high-caliber (albeit not top-caliber) recruits and can be explained by YTT scientists’ access to greater funding and larger research teams. This paper has policy implications for the mobility of scientific talent, especially as early-career scientists face growing challenges in accessing research funding in the United States and European Union.
When Opportunity Knocks: China's Open Door Policy and Declining Educational Attainment
Xuan Jiang, Kendall Kennedy & Jiatong Zhong
Labour Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In 1978, China opened its door to the outside world. This study investigates how the Open Door Policy affected the educational choices of workers born 1960-1970. Using measures of local labor markets’ export exposure, we find the Open Door Policy decreased educational attainment; youths born from 1965-70 facing the mean export exposure were 5.6-13.3 p.p. less likely to complete high school than those born in 1960. Our findings suggest a complicated relationship between Chinese human capital accumulation and economic growth during the industrialization of the 1980s and 1990s, as the Open Door Policy reduced skilled labor in the most export-exposed regions.
Innovation on Wings: Nonstop Flights and Firm Innovation in the Global Context
Dany Bahar et al.
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study whether, when, and how better connectivity through nonstop flights leads to positive innovation outcomes for firms in the global context. Using unique data of all flights emanating from 5,015 airports around the globe from 2005 to 2015 and exploiting a regression discontinuity framework, we report that a 10% increase in nonstop flights between two locations leads to a 3.4% increase in citations and a 1.4% increase in the production of collaborative patents between those locations. This effect is driven primarily by firms, as opposed to by academic institutions. We further study the characteristics of firms and firm locations that are salient to the relation between nonstop flights and innovation outcomes across countries. Using a gravity model, we posit and find that the positive effect of nonstop flights on innovation is stronger for firms and subsidiaries with greater innovation mass (e.g., stocks of inventors and R&D spending), for firms and subsidiaries located in innovation hubs or in countries that are deemed technology leaders, and for firm and subsidiaries that are separated by large cultural or temporal distance.
The Importance of Business Travel for Trade: Evidence from the Liberalization of the Soviet Airspace
Bengt Söderlund
University of Virginia Working Paper, September 2022
Abstract:
The strong negative relationship between geographical distance and trade is not well understood. I use the liberalization of the Soviet airspace to estimate the causal impact of business travel cost on trade. The liberalization radically reduced travel time between Europe and East Asia and was followed by a significant increase in trade. I find that the cost of business travel can account for a large share of the trade frictions that cause trade to sharply decline with distance. A plausible explanation for these results is that face-to-face interaction through business travel is important for trade.
The political effects of trade with Japan in the 1980s
Shuichiro Nishioka & Eric Olson
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
The 1974 trade act substantially increased the executive branch's authority in trade negotiations through the granting of fast-track and Section 301 authority. This paper evaluates the effect on U.S. voting behavior resulting from trade with Japan over 1976–1992 time period. To capture U.S. trade exposures to Japan, we develop the Bartik index from Autor et al. (2013) for import competition with Japan and show that local exposure to import competition had statistically significant negative impacts on Republican presidential candidates over the 1976–1984 period. Although the second Reagan administration used Section 301 to open Japan's markets and Japanese firms shifted production to the United States, job-creation effects of exports and foreign direct investment did not have any influence on voting outcomes.
Economic geography aspects of the Panama Canal
Stephan Maurer & Ferdinand Rauch
Oxford Economic Papers, January 2023, Pages 142–162
Abstract:
This paper studies how the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 changed counties’ market potential and influenced the economic geography of the USA. We compute shipment effective distances with and without the canal from each US county to each other US county and to international ports and compute the resulting change in market potential. The main elasticity would imply that a 1% increase in market potential led to a total increase of population by around 2.3% in 1940. We compute similar elasticities for wages, land values, and immigration from out of state. Tradable (manufacturing) industries react stronger than non-tradable (services) industries.