While China reduced tariffs as part of the WTO accession process, it also reduced the rebates of the value added tax (VAT) for exporters. We use a multi-sector multi-country Ricardian model to examine the extent to which these de facto export tax changes benefited China and nullified the...

Agglomeration brings costs (e.g., intensified local competition) as well as benefits (e.g., knowledge spillover). It is important to examine the net impact of agglomeration to understand the geographic distribution of economic activities. In this study, we use firm markup (defined as the ratio...

In this paper, we investigate whether there is a pollution haven effect, specifically, the effect of environmental regulations on firm location. Our identification uses the Two Control Zones (TCZ) policy implemented by the Chinese government in 1998. The difference-in-differences (DID)...

Using China Customs data that cover monthly transactions of all Chinese exporters, we investigate how Chinese exporters respond to U.S. antidumping investigations during the 2000-2006 period. Our difference-in-differences analysis uncovers a number of findings: the substantial trade-dampening...

This paper contributes to the literature by identifying the causal effect of firm investment on exporting behavior. The identification hinges on regional variations in the 2004 value-added tax pilot reform in China, which generated positive investment shocks. The instrumental variable estimation...