To understand the effects of trade policy uncertainty on firm-level export decisions, we study firm-product data on Chinese exports to the U.S. in the years surrounding China's 2001 WTO accession. Following predictions based on a model of heterogeneous firms, we provide empirical evidence that...

Numerical simulation exercises to analyze the impacts of potential changes in non-tariff policies commonly use ad valorem equivalent tariff treatment even though estimated impacts using explicit model representation and ad valorem equivalent treatments will differ. The difficulty for modellers...

A standard finding in the political economy of trade policy literature is that we should expect export-oriented industries to attract more assistance than import-competing industries. In reality, however, trade policy is heavily biased toward supporting import industries. This paper shows within...

How does import protection affect export performance? In trade models with scale economies, import liberalization can reduce industry-level exports by cutting domestic production. We show that this export destruction mechanism reduced US export growth following the permanent normalization of...

The trade war initiated by the Trump administration is the largest since the US imposed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in the 1930s and was still raging when he left office. We analyze how the trade war impacted the 2020 US Presidential election. Our results highlight the political salience of the...

A common narrative is that COVID-19 cost Trump re-election. We do not find supporting evidence; if anything, the pandemic helped Trump. However, we find substantial evidence that voters abandoned Trump in counties with large increases in health insurance coverage since the Affordable Care Act,...

Most evidence for the resource curse comes from cross-country growth regressions suffers from a bias originating from the high and ever-evolving volatility in commodity prices. This paper addresses these issues by providing new cross-country empirical evidence for the effect of resources in...

We document key features of the deepening economic relationship between Brazil and China. This is evident from sharply increased bilateral trade and foreign direct investment flows and also from enhanced cohesion of negotiating positions in international fora. Data presented show bilateral trade...