Primary: International Economics
Secondary: Industrial Organization and Applied Microeconomics
This paper analyzes the interaction of trade policy with the vertical structures of foreign firms exporting goods to the United States, focusing on the case of antidumping duties. I use a model that incorporates both vertical structure and the dynamics of U.S. antidumping duties to show that the policy has a notably different impact on vertically integrated and non-integrated foreign firms. I then successfully test the theoretical predictions using data on 489 antidumping cases. In particular, I find that vertically integrated firms are less likely than non-integrated firms to exit the U.S. market following the imposition of duties, and more likely to pass the duties on to consumers for certain products. My empirical findings also indicate that antidumping duties oscillate between low and high levels - a previously unnoticed, surprising and most-likely unintended consequence of the design of U.S. antidumping policy that is nevertheless predicted by my model.
For
many traded products, high transportation costs can lead to regionally
segmented markets, affecting both patterns of trade and the impact of trade
policy. This paper studies the imposition of anti dumping duties in the cement
industry, finding striking regional variation in how these duties affected
domestic prices, sales and imports. Duties imposed on Japanese producers shipping
cement to the West Coast had no impact on domestic prices: there was almost
perfect import substitution to other Asian producers. Duties imposed on Mexican
producers shipping cement to the U.S. Southwest, where alternative supply was
not readily available, had no impact on prices or sales of domestic producers:
the duties were absorbed by the Mexican producers. Duties imposed on Mexican
producers shipping cement to the