Research
Working Papers
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Platforms for Growth? Multinationals, Trade, and Technology Diffusion
|SSRN
We study the role of export platforms—sectors that combine export-oriented production with a strong multinational firm presence—in shaping trade and growth. Empirically, we focus on Vietnam and exploit variation across sectors along two dimensions: first, in exposure to a reform that sharply lowered the cost of exporting to the United States; and second, in pre-reform openness to multinationals. We find that the interaction of export market access and multinational presence generated large increases in exports, sales, and employment. These differential effects were driven by both multinationals and domestically-owned firms, and domestic firms in exposed sectors report more links with multinationals, more technology transfer, and more technology modifications. Motivated by these results, we build a quantitative model that embeds multinational production and technology diffusion within a general equilibrium trade framework. We calibrate the model's key parameters by targeting our empirical results and quantify how becoming an export platform has contributed to Vietnam's growth.
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Place-based Policy, Migration Barriers, and Spatial Inequality
|SSRN
What makes place-based incentives for firms succeed at reducing spatial inequality? The answer depends on where workers migrate and thus on how migration costs vary across destinations. I develop a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model with firm dynamics and endogenous public services. Vietnam's enterprise tax and household registration reforms provide variation in place-based incentives and migration costs. I exploit these variations to discipline key elasticities. I find that where migration costs fall matters more than how much they fall. When migration barriers fall toward secondary cities rather than metropolitan areas in Vietnam, the redistributive effect of place-based incentives increases fivefold.
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Does Easing Migration Barriers Increase Labor Unrest? Evidence from the Hukou Reform in China
|SSRN
Granting migrants formal legal status is widely thought to reduce crime and social unrest. We find the opposite. China’s 2014 Hukou reform eased internal migration barriers most extensively in cities below one million residents. Labor unrest in those cities rose by roughly 30 percent relative to partially reformed cities, concentrated in manufacturing, construction, and transportation, the sectors employing most migrants. Separately collected data on political protests show no comparable increase. Manufacturing employment did not expand, while earnings fell in low-skill services. We argue that formal status expanded migrants’ local social and economic entitlements faster than employers and local governments fulfilled them, generating greater contention over jobs and benefits rather than broader political mobilization.
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Better Jobs for Mothers, More Sons at Birth
Vietnam's sex ratio at birth became more male-biased even as gender gaps in employment and education narrowed. We test a household model with son preference in which maternal wage gains tighten the time cost of childbearing, lowering fertility and raising sex selection despite higher returns to daughters. Exploiting industry-level tariff cuts from the 2001 US-Vietnam trade agreement, we assign exposure separately to each parent. Maternal exposure raises male births and lowers fertility, whereas paternal exposure raises fertility but not sex selection. Closing labor-market gender gaps can widen gaps at birth where childcare falls mainly on mothers and son preference persists.