Research

Resource-rich developing countries increasingly restrict raw mineral exports to promote industrial upgrading. I develop a general equilibrium framework in which mineral export restrictions improve the terms of trade and subsidize downstream manufacturing, but their welfare implications depend critically on how far downstream production expands. Using a global dataset of 112 mineral export restrictions imposed by 28 countries during 2008–2023, I trace their effects along downstream production chains. I find that restrictions reduce targeted mineral exports by 42 percent while raising their export prices by 14 percent. Downstream exports increase by 12 percent, but the gains are confined to the first processing stage and concentrated in base metals and technologically simple products. This reveals a policy dilemma: mineral export restrictions raise export prices and stimulate basic processing, but fail to deliver the broad-based industrial upgrading that policymakers envision.

China’s integration into world markets fueled spectacular growth in its manufacturing regions. This paper shows that such growth came at the expense of another China: regions outside the manufacturing core. Exploiting reduced U.S. trade policy uncertainty following China’s WTO accession, I find that greater exposure expanded manufacturing in core counties but reduced it in the periphery. While core counties diversified, peripheral counties failed to absorb labor released from agriculture and experienced industrial downgrading. A spatial general equilibrium model with heterogeneous regional productivity distributions and internal migration accounts for these patterns, showing that trade integration can exacerbate pre-existing spatial inequality.

Unreliable electricity infrastructure imposes substantial costs on firms, prompting private investment in distributed generation. We study this transition in South Africa, where widespread blackouts coincided with rapid rooftop solar expansion. Combining solar registration records, load-shedding schedules, and spatial tax data, we show that severe outages induce persistent solar adoption, particularly in areas with greater solar potential. Using an instrumental variables strategy exploiting national load-shedding and local solar suitability, we find that solar adoption improves firm survival and resilience to subsequent outages. However, solar adoption also reduces grid electricity purchases, undermining municipal revenues that finance public services. We develop a quantitative spatial equilibrium model incorporating endogenous grid reliability, firm generation choices, and municipal fiscal dependence on electricity sales. Our findings highlight a fundamental trade-off: distributed solar enables private adaptation to unreliable infrastructure while potentially weakening the financing of public provision.