Antidumping Duties and Plant-Level Restructuring
December 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-60
Abstract
This paper examines the effect of antidumping duties on the restructuring activities of protected
plants. Using a dataset that contains the full population of U.S. manufacturers, I find that protected plants increase their capital intensities modestly relative to unprotected plants, but only when antidumping duties have been in place for a sufficient duration. I find little effect of antidumping duties on a proxy for the skilled labor intensity of protected plants.
Document Tags and Keywords
Keywords
Keywords are automatically generated using KeyBERT, a powerful and innovative
keyword extraction tool that utilizes BERT embeddings to ensure high-quality and contextually relevant
keywords.
By analyzing the content of working papers, KeyBERT identifies terms and phrases that capture the essence of the
text, highlighting the most significant topics and trends. This approach not only enhances searchability but
provides connections that go beyond potentially domain-specific author-defined keywords.
:
market,
production,
macroeconomic,
restructuring,
produce,
tariff,
profit,
unobserved,
plant,
plants industries,
federal,
plant employment,
manufacturing plants,
policy,
benefit
Tags
Tags are automatically generated using a pretrained language model from spaCy, which excels at
several tasks, including entity tagging.
The model is able to label words and phrases by part-of-speech,
including "organizations." By filtering for frequent words and phrases labeled as "organizations", papers are
identified to contain references to specific institutions, datasets, and other organizations.
:
Standard Industrial Classification,
International Trade Commission,
Federal Reserve System,
Board of Governors
Similar Working Papers
Similarity between working papers are determined by an unsupervised neural
network model
know as Doc2Vec.
Doc2Vec is a model that represents entire documents as fixed-length vectors, allowing for the
capture of semantic meaning in a way that relates to the context of words within the document. The model learns to
associate a unique vector with each document while simultaneously learning word vectors, enabling tasks such as
document classification, clustering, and similarity detection by preserving the order and structure of words. The
document vectors are compared using cosine similarity/distance to determine the most similar working papers.
Papers identified with 🔥 are in the top 20% of similarity.
The 10 most similar working papers to the working paper 'Antidumping Duties and Plant-Level Restructuring' are listed below in order of similarity.
-
Working PaperPlant-Level Responses to Antidumping Duties: Evidence from U.S. Manufacturers🔥
October 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-38R
This paper describes the effects of a temporary increase in tariffs on the performance and behavior of U.S. manufacturers. Using antidumping duties as an example of temporary protection, I compare the responses of protected manufacturers to those predicted by models of trade with heterogeneous firms. I find that apparent increases in revenue productivity associated with antidumping duties are primarily due to increases in prices and mark-ups, as physical productivity falls among protected plants. Moreover, antidumping duties slow the reallocation of resources from less productive to more productive uses by reducing product-switching behavior among protected plants.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperAre All Trade Protection Policies Created Equal? Empirical Evidence for Nonequivalent Market Power Effects of Tariffs and Quotas🔥
September 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-27
The steel industry has been protected by a wide variety of trade policies, both tariff- and quota-based, over the past decades. This extensive heterogeneity in trade protection provides the opportunity to examine the well-established theoretical literature predicting nonequivalent effects of tariffs and quotas on domestic firms' market power. Robust to a variety of empirical specifications with U.S. Census data on the population of U.S. steel plants from 1967-2002, we find evidence for significant market power effects for binding quota-based protection, but not for tariff-based protection. There is only weak evidence that antidumping protection increases market power.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperFirm Finances and Responses to Trade Liberalization: Evidence from U.S. Tariffs on China
November 2021
Working Paper Number:
CES-21-37
This paper examines the relationship between a firm's finances and its response to trade liberalization. Using a landmark change in U.S. tariff policy vis-'-vis Chinese imports and micro level data from the U.S. Census Bureau, I find larger manufacturing job losses in better capitalized firms - those with less leverage and more cash on hand. The effects concentrate in industries where weaker balance sheets are likely to lead to collateral and other borrowing constraints, helping rule out alternative explanations. Finally, domestic manufacturing job losses are not accompanied by greater reductions in sales or aggregate employment, but better capitalized firms do exhibit reduced input costs and increased productivity. These findings point to offshoring as the predominant firm response to trade liberalization and suggest a role for financial capacity in facilitating offshoring investments.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperU.S. Trade in Toxics: The Case of Chlorodifluoromethane (HCFC-22)
September 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-29
This paper explores whether environmental regulation affects where pollution-intensive goods are produced. Here we examine chlorodifluoromethane (HCFC-22), a chemical designated as toxic in 1994 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Trends show a decline in the number of domestic producers of this chemical, a decline in the number of manufacturing facilities using it, and an increase in the number (and share) of facilities claiming to import it. Transaction-level trade data show an increase in the import of HCFC-22 imports since its TRI listing ' an increase that is faster than that of all non-TRI listed chemicals. This is suggestive of a pollution haven effect. Meanwhile, we find that the vast majority of U.S. imports of HCFC-22 come from OECD countries. However, an increase in the share of imports from non-OECD countries since the chemical's listing suggests a shift of production to countries with more lax environmental standards. While the findings here are suggestive of regulatory effects, more rigorous analyses are needed to rule out other possible explanations.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperTHE INFLUENCES OF FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENTS, INTRAFIRM TRADING, AND CURRENCY UNDERVALUATION ON U.S. FIRM TRADE DISPUTES
January 2014
Working Paper Number:
CES-14-04
We use the case of a puzzling decline in U.S. firm antidumping (AD) filings to explore how firm-level economic heterogeneity within U.S. industries influences political and regulatory responses to changes in the global economy. Firms exhibit heterogeneity both within and across industries regarding foreign direct investment. We propose that firms making vertical, or resource-seeking, investments abroad will be less likely to file AD petitions. Hence, we argue, the increasing vertical FDI of U.S. firms (particularly in countries with undervalued currencies) makes trade disputes far less likely. We use firm level data to examine the universe of U.S. manufacturing firms and find that AD filers generally conduct no intrafirm trade with filed-against countries. Among U.S. MNCs, the number of AD filings is negatively associated with increases in the level of intrafirm trade for large firms. In the context of currency undervaluation, we confirm the existing finding that undervaluation is associated with more AD filings. We also find, however, that high levels of related-party imports from countries with undervalued currencies significantly decrease the numbers of AD filings. Our study highlights the centrality of global production networks in understanding political mobilization over international economic policy. [192]View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperTRADE LIBERALIZATION AND LABOR SHARES IN CHINA
May 2014
Working Paper Number:
CES-14-24
We estimate the extent to which firms responded to tariff reductions associated with China's WTO entry by altering labor's share of value. Firm-level regressions indicate that firms in industries subject to tariff cuts raised labor's share relative to economy-wide trends, both through input choices and rent sharing. Labor's share of value is an estimated 12 percent higher in 2007 than it would be if tariffs had remained at their 1998 levels. There is significant variation across firms: the impact is larger where market access is better and it is influenced by union presence and state ownership.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperExporting and Productivity
May 2000
Working Paper Number:
CES-00-07
Exporting is often touted as a way to increase economic growth. This paper examines whether exporting has played any role in increasing productivity growth in U.S. manufacturing. Contemporaneous levels of exports and productivity are indeed positively correlated across manufacturing industries. However, tests on industry data show causality from productivity to exporting but not the reverse. While exporting plants have substantially higher productivity levels, we find no evidence that exporting increases plant productivity growth rates. However, within the same industry, exporters do grow faster than non-exporters in terms of both shipments and employment. We show that exporting is associated with the reallocation of resources from less efficient to more efficient plants. In the aggregate, these reallocation effects are quite large, making up over 40 percent of total factor productivity growth in the manufacturing sector. Half of this reallocation to more productive plants occurs within industries and the direction of the reallocation is towards exporting plants. The positive contribution of exporters even shows up in import-competing industries and non-tradable sectors. The overall contribution of exporters to manufacturing productivity growth far exceeds their shares of employment and output.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperDownsizing, Layoffs and Plant Closure: The Impacts of Import Price Pressure and Technological Growth on U.S. Textile Producers
April 2006
Working Paper Number:
CES-06-10
Downsizing, layoffs and plant closure are three plant-level responses to adverse economic conditions. I provide a theoretical and empirical analysis that illustrates the sources of each phenomenon and the implications for production and employment in the textiles industry. I consider two potential causes of these phenomena: technological progress and increased import competition. I create a micro-founded model of plant-level decision-making and combine it with conditions for dynamic market equilibrium. Through use of detailed plant-level information available in the US Census of Manufacturers and the Annual Survey of Manufacturers for the period 1982-2001, along with price data on imports, I examine the relative contribution of technology and import competition to the decline in output, employment and number of plants in textiles production in the US in recent years. The market-clearing domestic price of textiles is identified as a crucial channel in transmitting technology or import price shocks to downsizing, layoffs and plant closure. The model is estimated on two 4-digit sectors of textiles production (SIC 2211, broadwoven cotton and SIC 2221, broadwoven man-made fiber). The results validate modeling the production sectors as monopolistically competitive, and the elasticity of substitution between foreign and domestic varieties is found to be quite high. The coefficients on the productive technology are sensible, as are the estimated parameters of the plant exit, entry and investment decision rules. In simulations for the broadwoven cotton industry, the effects of technological progress are shown to have a much larger impact on layoffs than on plant closure, with plant size as measured by output actually increasing. Falling foreign prices lead to greater relative magnitudes of plant closure than of downsizing or layoffs.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperThe Green Industry: An Examination of Environmental Products Manufacturing
September 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-34
The "green industry" is often noted in discussions of the costs and benefits of environmental policy, and it has been characterized as a unique industry with substantial potential for employment growth, well-paying jobs, and export opportunities. In this paper, we examine the characteristics and recent economic performance of the green industry, using establishment-level data on environmental products manufacturers (EPMs) from the 1995 Survey of Environmental Products and Services, together with data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures and various Census of Manufactures. Results suggest that there are some differences between EPMs and their non-EPM counterparts in the same industry, in terms of employment, employee compensation, exports, and productivity. However, we do not find any evidence that EPMs performed any better than otherwise similar plants, in terms of survival, employment growth, wage growth, and export growth. Our findings offer a more complex and nuanced portrayal of the green industry than is typical, and we suggest that this industry may not be as exceptional as is sometimes maintained.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperThe Effects of Outsourcing on the Elasticity of Labor Demand
March 2006
Working Paper Number:
CES-06-07
In this paper, I focus on the effects of outsourcing on conditional labor demand elasticities. I begin by developing a model of outsourcing that formalizes this relationship. I show that the increased possibility of outsourcing (modeled as a decline in foreign intermediate input prices and an increase in the elasticity of substitution between foreign and domestic intermediate inputs) should increase labor demand elasticities. I also show that, a decline in the share of unskilled labor, due either to skill biased technological change or to movement of unskilled labor intensive stages abroad, can work in the opposite direction and reverse the increasing trend in elasticities. I then test the predictions of the model using the U.S. Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database (LRD). The instrumental variable approach used in the estimation of labor demand equations is the main methodological contribution of this paper. I directly address the endogeneity of wages in the labor demand equation by using average nonmanufacturing wages for each location and year as an instrumental variable for the plant-level wages in the manufacturing sector. The results support the main predictions of my model. U.S. manufacturing plants operating in industries that heavily outsource experienced an increase in their conditional labor demand elasticities during the 1980-1992 period. After 1992 elasticities began to decrease in outsourcing industries. This finding is consistent with the model which suggests that a decline in the share of unskilled labor in total cost could result in such a decrease in labor demand elasticities, precisely when the level of outsourcing is high. Estimates at the two-digit industry level provide further evidence in support of the hypothesis that heavily outsourcing industries experience greater increases in their elasticities.View Full Paper PDF
