California's Exports and the 2004 Overseas Office Closures

Because of an endogeneity problem, estimating the impact of state export promotion programs on exports is difficult. The 2003 California budget crisis provides a natural experiment, circumventing this problem. Due to the crisis, California closed all 12 overseas oces on January 1, 2004. Applying the differences-in-differences estimator to a sample of 44 countries over eight years yields mixed results. The estimated 0.02% increase in exports if the offices remained open is not robust. Therefore, any impact of California's overseas offices on exports is roughly the size of the largest random fluctuations.international trade, exports, promotion, overseas offices, differences-in-differences

State Export Behavior and Barriers

The pattern of U.S. state exports to foreign destination--which states export which goods to which destinations|has not been studied in detail despite the high profile of exports in the public consciousness. Currently there is not a clear description of facts characterizing exports for all states, destinations, and manufacturing subsectors. I combine research methods from both firm- and country-level empirical international trade on a cross section of state export data to list seventeen stylized facts that any state trade theory should account for.empirical international trade, exports, states, geography, gravity

State Trade Missions

From 1997-2006, U.S. state governors led more than ve hundred trade missions to foreign countries. Trade missions are potentially a form of public investment in export promotion. I create a theory of public investment by introducing government to a Melitz (2003)-Chaney (2008) trade model. Controlling for state and country characteristics, the model predicts a positive relationship between missions and exports by destination. I create a data set on trade missions and match it with state export data, both with destination information. I estimate this relationship in the data, and reject the hypothesis that missions are to random destinations.international trade, exports, states, missions, investment

Analyzing the export flow from Texas to Mexico

From 1997 to 2008, Texas shipped 40 percent of its manufacturing exports to Mexico. This puts Texas-Mexico among the largest state-country trading relationships. But this share has been declining recently. A gravity equation cannot account for either of these facts, even though Texas and Mexico share a border. This positive contiguity effect is not unique in state export data. I study the features of the Texas-Mexico relationship to try to account for the size of the export flow and the recent decline in share. Data limitations prevent a full accounting, but the most likely feature is the changing source of maquiladora inputs from the United States to AsiaTexas ; Mexico ; Maquiladora ; Mexican-American Border Region - Economic conditions ; International trade ; Exports

Economic Impacts of the Elimination of Azinphos-methyl on the Apple Industry and Washington State

The Environmental Protection Agency has declared the organophosphate pesticide azinphos-methyl (AZM) cannot be used in the production of apples after September 30, 2012. We estimate the change to sales, price, and employment to the Washington State apple industry from using the likely AZM alternative had this ban been in effect in 2007. Furthermore, we estimate the effects of this ban as it ripples through the overall Washington State economy. We find the ban will bring a relatively modest change to sales (-0.8%), prices (0.2%), and employment (0.1%) in the apple industry, with negligible impacts on the overall Washington State economy.apples, azinphos-methyl, economic impact, computable general equilibrium

Comparing the Economic Impact of an Export Shock in Two Modeling Frameworks

Because of more restrictive assumptions on regional input-output (IO) models compared to computable general equilibrium (CGE) models, the literature agrees IO results are intuitively consistent with long run equilibrium but otherwise overestimated. We compare the results of IO and CGE models from an exogenous export shock under various labor market constraints and capital closures. Consistent with the literature, we find the IO model's results do not match those of the CGE models. But contrary to conventional wisdom, the positive secondary impacts are larger with the CGE models than with the IO model. Furthermore, we find the closest match between direct effects is when the CGE model has short run restrictions. Our finding means that the common view of CGE model results being both lower in estimate and more accurate in the short run than IO models does not universally hold. Thus researchers’ choice of models and interpretation of results need to be more nuanced and cautious than previously thought.input-output, computable general equilibrium, economic impacts, exports

Body size changes in passerine birds introduced to New Zealand from the UK

One feature of global geographic variation in avian body sizes is that they are larger on isolated islands than on continental regions. Therefore, this study aims to assess whether there have been changes in body size following successful establishment for seven passerine bird species (blackbird Turdus merula, song thrush T. philomelos, house sparrow Passer domesticus, chaffinch Fringilla coelebs, greenfinch Chloris chloris, goldfinch Carduelis carduelis, yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella) introduced from the continental islands of the UK to the more isolated oceanic landmass of New Zealand in the middle of the nineteenth century. Measures of tarsus length were taken from individuals from contemporary UK and New Zealand populations of these species, and from historical specimens collected around the time that individuals were translocated from the UK to New Zealand. Analysis of Variance was used to test for size differences between contemporary UK and New Zealand populations, and between historical UK and contemporary UK and New Zealand populations. Historical UK populations have longer tarsi, on average, than 12 (7 UK and 5 New Zealand) of the 14 contemporary populations. Significant decreases in tarsus length relative to the historical populations have occurred in the UK for blackbird, chaffinch and greenfinch, and in the New Zealand blackbird population. Contemporary New Zealand house sparrows have significantly longer tarsi, on average, than both historical and contemporary UK populations. Exposure to novel environments may be expected to lead to changes in the morphology and other traits of exotic species, but changes have also occurred in the native range. In fact, contrary to expectations, the most common differences we found were between contemporary and historical UK populations. Consideration of contemporary populations alone would underestimate the true scale of morphological change in these species over time, which may be due to phenotypic plasticity or genetic adaptation to environmental changes experienced by all populations in the last 150 years

Estimating state-industry employment, with an application to industrial localization

We describe a method to construct an industry-by-state repeated cross-section of employment at the most disaggregated level publicly available, covering 1963–2012. Nondisclosed data are estimated with a procedure using the hierarchical information structure. To illustrate the usefulness of the procedure, the resulting estimated data are tested to determine if industrial localization of the processed food sector has changed over the last 50 years in the United States. Our findings suggest it has not changed systemically despite variation in levels of localization within industries

A Practitioner’s Guide to Testing Regional Industrial Localization

The Ellison-Glaeser index is an unbiased measure of geographic industrial localization that improves upon simpler measures, such as the location quotient. We develop and describe software that allows for the Ellison-Glaeser index to be used in a statistical test to assess the chance that a particular industry is geographically localized. We give instructions on how to install the software, run the program, and interpret the results

Simulating Confidence for the Ellison-Glaeser Index

The Ellison and Glaeser (1997) index is an unbiased statistic of industrial localization. Though the expected value of the index is known, ad hoc thresholds are used to interpret the extent of localization. We improve the interpretation of the index by simulating confidence intervals that a practitioner may use for a statistical test. In the data, we find cases whose index value is above the ad hoc threshold that are not statistically significant. We find many cases below the ad hoc threshold that are statistically significant. Our simulation program is freely available and is customizable for specific applications