Essays in Empirical Economics

Yu, Wenshuang

Essays in Empirical Economics

dc.contributor.advisor	Magesan, Arvind
dc.contributor.author	Yu, Wenshuang
dc.contributor.committeemember	Laliberte, Jean-William
dc.contributor.committeemember	Tombe, Trevor
dc.date.accessioned	2024-08-01T17:15:45Z
dc.date.available	2024-08-01T17:15:45Z
dc.date.issued	2024-07-23
dc.description.abstract	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.
dc.identifier.citation	Yu, W. (2024). Essays in empirical economics (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1880/119329
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher.faculty	Graduate Studies
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary
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.
dc.subject	Product Innovation
dc.subject	Trade Policy
dc.subject	COVID-19
dc.subject	Import Competition
dc.subject	Advanced Technology
dc.subject.classification	Economics
dc.title	Essays in Empirical Economics
dc.type	doctoral thesis
thesis.degree.discipline	Economics
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Calgary
thesis.degree.name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
ucalgary.thesis.accesssetbystudent	I do not require a thesis withhold – my thesis will have open access and can be viewed and downloaded publicly as soon as possible.