Essays in development economics, environmental economics and international trade

Kuroishi, Yusuke (2021) Essays in development economics, environmental economics and international trade. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This thesis consists of three chapters on international trade and environmental economics in developing countries. The first chapter examines trademarks in developing countries. I introduce a trademark as a technology to mitigate information frictions in a general equilibrium setting with firm heterogeneity. In my model, highly productive firms are more likely to use a trademark, since the revenue increase outweighs the trademark cost only for these firms. I test my theoretical predictions using Chinese exports to Africa in the tire industry. By exploiting a staggered ratification of the international trademark agreement in Africa, I find evidence of reallocation away from less productive firms. I also show that trademarks are welfare-enhancing technology in Africa. The second chapter investigates the effects of corporate environmental responsibility in global supply chains on environmental pollution by exploiting a change in an environmental tax policy in China. First, I find that Chinese firms that participate in global supply chains respond to the tax change by reducing the amount and intensity of water pollution with an increase in revenues. Second, the response to the tax is concentrated among tier 2 suppliers. Finally, the result shows that the new tax policy has a larger effect on Chinese suppliers linked to global buyers that have higher corporate environmental responsibility. These results are consistent with the notion that corporate environmental responsibility is associated with higher environmental standards, both through selection and treatment effects and potentially playing a significant role in complementing host countries' policies aimed at curbing pollution. The third chapter studies how infrastructural instability affects export practices of sellers in developing countries. By leveraging order-level export data and exploiting seasonal power outages in Myanmar, I find that exporters decrease their exports in seasons of frequent power outages. I also show that the effect is heterogeneous across orders for buyers adopting different sourcing strategies. The results suggest that infrastructural instability in developing countries is of crucial concern for linking domestic firms with foreign buyers.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2021 Yusuke Kuroishi
Library of Congress subject classification:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HF Commerce
Sets:	Departments > Economics
Supervisor:	Macchiavello, Rocco
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4390

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