Research Papers
The Effect of Agricultural Protectionism under Climate Change
(Job Market Paper)
Climate change is expected to disrupt the global food supply by affecting the productivity of agricultural inputs. International trade can help alleviate food shortages by facilitating the flow of farm products from regions with more arable land to those with less. However, many governments, driven by political motives, impose high tariffs to protect their farmers, hampering the efficiency of agricultural trade. This paper examines the welfare costs of government favoritism toward the agricultural sector in the context of climate change. The findings show that governments' asymmetric sectoral preferences result in suboptimal tariffs under climate change, significantly reducing welfare. Furthermore, I find that even under a strong global cooperation scenario in trade policies, welfare does not improve if governments engage in trade talks with biased sectoral preferences. Therefore, it is suggested that policymakers abandon favoritism toward agriculture and pursue cooperative trade policies to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change.​
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Presented at: Boston College International Trade Lunch Seminar (2024.11)
The Effect of Global Cooperation on
International Migration under Climate Change
Climate change is projected to displace millions of people by making their lands less habitable, yet international migration remains heavily restricted by policy and other barriers. This paper examines the welfare effects of global cooperation in reducing migration frictions in response to climate change. I incorporate migration into a Ricardian trade model, introducing heterogeneous households that make discrete migration decisions. Countries are then allowed to cooperate on migration flows, similar to the "trade-talk'' scenario of Ossa (2014). Counterfactual analyses show that global cooperation on migration barriers increases average global welfare by 0.49%, and when combined with zero tariffs, this figure rises to 1.62%. Under climate change scenarios, migration cooperation significantly mitigates welfare losses, highlighting its potential as an adaptation channel. These findings suggest that coordinated migration and trade policies could help alleviate the adverse impacts of climate change.
(A draft is available upon request)​
Robots, Heterogeneous Firms, and International Trade:
Evidence from U.S. Firms (work-in-progress)
Automation technologies, such as industrial robots, are increasingly used in the production of goods and services, replacing traditionally human-based jobs. Although robots are expected to rapidly expand their capacity to replace human labor, our understanding of their effects on welfare and other economic variables remains limited. This paper contributes to the literature by presenting a theoretical model that incorporates automation technology into the general equilibrium framework of Melitz (2003). In my model, heterogeneous firms compete in a monopolistically competitive market and make decisions regarding automation and export. If a firm chooses to automate, it incurs a fixed cost and replaces a portion of its labor input. Based on this setup, I derive comparative static results, showing that welfare increases in both closed and open economies when the fixed cost of robot installation decreases and the robots' human replacement ratio increases. Additionally, I demonstrate that the gains from trade are enhanced by lower robot installation costs and a higher replacement ratio.
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(A preliminary draft is available upon request)