Essays in Empirical Economics

This thesis consists of three essays in empirical economics. The first two essays explore whether and how trade policies impact individual firms decision-making and how these decisions affect economic growth in developing countries. Specifically, in the first essay, I study whether improved access to high-income countries increases product innovation. To do so, I use administrative firm and Customs data and exploit a reform that significantly increased high-income market access for firms in China. My results show that improved access to high-income markets causes firms to produce new products, which explains about 26\% of the observed increase in product innovation from 2000 to 2007. Additionally, I find that these gains are primarily driven by the increase in revenue generated by exporting to high-income countries. These results highlight the importance of improving access to high-income developing countries for the economic growth in developing countries. In the second essay, which is joint work with Felix Fosu, we study how exposure to imports affects firms' decisions to upgrading foreign production technology in China. To do this, we exploit industry-level variations in tariff reductions generated by China's accession to the WTO in December 2001. This disparity in tariff reductions across industries leads to different levels of import competition across industries. Using the cross-industry variations in import competition, we show that increased import competition diminishes firms' willingness to upgrade their technology, consistent with a type of Schumpeterian effect in that the additional product market competition reduces the marginal return to upgrade production technology. In the third essay, which is a joint work with Gillian Petit and Lindsay M. Tedds, we investigate the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on public transit revenues in Calgary. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that COVID-19 had the largest impact on adult transit fare revenue, a smaller impact on youth fares, and almost no impact on low-income fares suggesting that youth and low-income transit pass users were less able to substitute away from or forgo public transit during the COVID-19 shock, unlike adults. Reductions in transit services that occurred at the same time were more likely borne by youth and low-income transit users. To minimize service reductions and their inequitable effects, we argue that given municipalities have little financial power and flexibility, higher orders of government should provide transit operating funding during times of transit fare shocks.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Economics

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Graduate Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Yu, Wenshuang

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Magesan, Arvind

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Laliberte, Jean-William
• Tombe, Trevor

• Product Innovation
• Trade Policy
• COVID-19
• Import Competition
• Advanced Technology

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/46836

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:1880/119329