Publications

We empirically examine how import competition affects sentiment toward China in local communities in the United States using a news-based index for sentiment. Results are threefold. First, U.S. sentiment toward China peaked in 2007 before turning negative. Second, communities more exposed to import competition from China have experienced greater deterioration in sentiment. Third, the trade-induced U.S. sentiment toward China is broad-based, encompassing political, military, and national security issues. These findings suggest that competition over trade may have important geopolitical implications through sentiment of local communities.

When wealth or income rises suddenly, the propensity for that "easy money" to be directed towards unproductive use, "easy spending", may rise. The cross-country relationship between conspicuous consumption and revenue windfalls is explored by estimating the response of demand for imports of luxury goods resulting from country-specific and plausibly exogenous variation in commodity export prices. The response of imports of luxury goods following a commodity export windfall is found to be bigger than that for non-luxury imports while there is substantial heterogeneity in the magnitude of the response between different categories of luxury import goods. The results also point to a significant increase in tourism from countries experiencing commodity export windfalls to the main luxury shopping destinations abroad. Countries that have higher inequality, weaker control of corruption or less democracy have significantly higher luxury import response following a commodity export windfall. This (luxury) import channel of the resource curse stems from the link between easy money and easy spending when weak mechanisms for resource allocation are in place.

This paper investigates the relationship between (internal) armed conflict and sustainable development. Using annual panel data on 192 countries from 2000 to 2024, we employ a variety of econometric techniques to trace the impulse responses between conflict fatalities and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) performance in both directions. Results reveal a striking asymmetry: conflict shocks produce long-lasting adverse effects on SDG performance, while SDG performance shocks exert only transient effects on conflict intensity. This asymmetry persists across external and major conflict episodes, and is robust to alternative identification strategies. Our findings indicate that sustainable development is fundamentally contingent on prior achievement of peace.