APPLICATIONS IN INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION AND ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

Abstract

The first two main chapters examine the effects of a 2018 US anti-dumping (AD) duty against China on consumer prices, seller costs, and trade flows of aluminum foil sold in grocery stores. Reduced-form results show a 7% price increase attributed to the imposition of AD duties for both foreign and domestic brands. I estimate a random coefficient logit model of demand and decompose prices into costs and markups. Both marginal costs and markups rise following the policy, implying more than 100% pass-through of cost increases to prices. These price increases translate to a more than 8 million dollar loss in consumer surplus each year. Compared to the no circumvention counterfactual, the model suggests that as much as 78% of potential price increases from the policy are mitigated by circumvention, which provides the first benchmark of its kind in the literature. The final chapter inspects the regions defined between the 38th parallel north and the DMZ on the Korean peninsula. These areas were governed by “different Koreas” from 1945-1950 and after 1953. Using nighttime lights data and geolocated population estimates, RD and OLS analysis find that there is (i.) no economic discontinuities at the 38th parallel, (ii.) that the region in the present-day DPRK which was presided over by the ROK from 1945-1950 is associated with significantly higher economic activity per capita than similar regions of the country, and (iii.) that economic activity and per capita economic activity in the DPRK is concentrated around the 38th parallel.