Global value chains have fundamentally transformed international trade and development in recent decades. We use matched firm-level customs and manufacturing survey data, together with Input-Output tables for China, to examine how Chinese firms position themselves in global production lines and...

We study how adverse economic shocks influence political outcomes in authoritarian regimes in strong states, by examining the 2013-2015 export slowdown in China. We exploit detailed customs data and the variation they reveal about Chinese prefectures' underlying exposure to the global trade...

We find that Republican candidates lost support in the 2018 congressional election in counties more exposed to trade retaliation, but saw no commensurate electoral gains from US tariff protection. The electoral losses were driven by retaliatory tariffs on agricultural products, and were only...

This paper evaluates the influence of host-country financial conditions on the global operations of multinational firms. Using detailed U.S. data, we establish that financial development in a country is associated with relatively more entry by multinational affiliates, as well as with higher...

This paper offers four contributions to the empirical literature on global value chains (GVCs). First, we provide a succinct overview of several measures developed to capture the upstreamness or downstreamness of industries and countries in GVCs. Second, we employ data from the World...

How much has the US-China tariff war impacted economic outcomes in China? We address this question using high-frequency night lights data, together with measures of the trade exposure of fine grid locations constructed from Chinese firms' geo-coordinates. Exploiting within-grid variation over...

This paper surveys the recent body of work in economics on the importance of global value chains (GVCs) in shaping international trade flows and multinational activity. On the empirical front, we begin reviewing several variants of the "macro approach" to measuring the relevance of global...

The 2004 Global Labor Survey (GLS) is an Internet-based survey that seeks to measure de facto labor practices in countries around the world, covering issues such as freedom of association, the regulation of work contracts, employee benefits and the prevalence of collective bargaining. To find...

Global value chains have fundamentally transformed international trade and development in recent decades. We use matched firm-level customs and manufacturing survey data, together with Input-Output tables for China, to examine how Chinese firms position themselves in global production lines and...