This paper explores how reductions in tariffs on imported inputs and final goods affect the productivity of large Chinese trading firms, with the special tariff treatment that processing fi rms receive on imported inputs. Firm-level input and output tarffs are constructed. Both types of tariff...

China has experienced dramatic trade liberalization in the late 1990s. In this paper, I investigate the impact of trade liberalization on firm productivity by using both Chinese manufacturing firm-level data and highly disaggregated Chinese import data over 1998-2002. For this purpose, I first...

This paper investigates how input trade liberalization affects fi rm-level wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labor. A fall in input tariffs generates increased fi rm pro fits, which, in turn, widens wage inequality since skilled labor enjoys a larger proportion of the incremental pro...

How do reductions in input trade costs affect firm's sales decision between domestic and foreign markets? Aside from tariffs cut in ordinary imports over time, a large extent of firms engaged in duty-free processing trade also experienced a decline in input trade cost. Accordingly, the imported...

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of China's processing trade using highly disaggregated 2010 transaction-level data. By highlighting the key role of processing trade in China's foreign trade, we argue that various free-trade zones have served as important instruments in boosting...

This paper provides robust empirical evidence that trade liberalization significantly impact corporate financing decisions. Trade liberalization results in changes in tariff schedules in both domestic and foreign markets, which are most likely exogenous to individual firms. Our empirical...

This paper first investigates the pattern of trade and industrial productivity in the ASEAN, China, and India (ACI). By using highly disaggregated COMTRADE data during 1998-2008, I find that the ACI countries exhibit significant productivity growth in manufacturing sectors. Both international...

We study the effect of heterogeneous monopsony power across Chinese firms on the equilibrium allocation of labor. Based on the fact that heterogeneity in monopsony power results from the heterogeneity in workers’ preferences for the jobs provided by an individual firm, we build a model to...

E-commerce certification can signal a firm's quality, reducing information frictions and incentivizing quality upgrading. This paper examines the effect of certification on quality upgrading both econometrically and using a novel dynamic structural model. To this end, we collected data from...

This paper examines why credit constraints for domestic and exporting firms arise in a setting where banks do not observe firms' productivities. To maintain incentive-compatibility, banks lend below the amount needed for first-best production. The longer time needed for export shipments induces...