Browsing by Author "Arita, Shawn"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    Agricultural exports and retaliatory trade actions: An empirical assessment of the 2018/2019 trade conflict
    Grant, Jason H.; Arita, Shawn; Emlinger, Charlotte; Johansson, Robert C.; Xie, Chaoping (2021-01)
    We estimate the ex-post agricultural trade impacts of retaliatory measures imposed by foreign countries in response to United States' Section 232 and 301 tariffs using a theoretically consistent, monthly, product line gravity equation. Retaliation led to significant US agricultural export losses of $13.5 to $18.7 billion on an annualized basis. Considerable heterogeneity exists in the average treatment effect of retaliation. First, retaliatory trade actions presented a strong within-year seasonal impact. Nearly 70% of aggregate trade losses occurred during the US's peak export marketing season. Second, U.S. trade losses were particularly pronounced on homogeneous bulk commodities, whereas product differentiation dampened the impact of retaliation. Third, with few exceptions, the counterfactually estimated direct trade losses line up well with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) trade damage estimates for trade aid programs distributed to farmers impacted by the trade dispute. Finally, we find little evidence that U.S. exports were able to be reoriented to alternative, nonretaliating markets-an indication of high bilateral trade frictions and the destructive consequences of retaliatory trade actions.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Has Covid19 Caused a Great Trade Collapse? An Initial Ex Post Assessment
    Arita, Shawn; Grant, Jason H.; Sydow, Sharon (Virginia Tech. Center for Agricultural Trade, 2020-11)
    This paper conducts an early econometric examination of the impacts of COVID-19 on international trade. We find the pandemic reduced global agricultural trade by 4.2% in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2020. Agricultural trade was found to be significantly more stable than nonagricultural trade; however, the level of disruption varies substantially across commodities.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Has global agricultural trade been resilient under coronavirus (COVID-19)? Findings from an econometric assessment of 2020
    Arita, Shawn; Grant, Jason H.; Sydow, Sharon; Beckman, Jayson (Elsevier, 2022-02)
    Global agricultural trade, which increased at the end of 2020, has been described as "resilient" to the impacts of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic; however, the size and channels of its quantitative impacts are not clear. Using a reduced-form, gravity-based econometric model for monthly trade, we estimate the effects of COVID-19 incidence rates, policy restrictions imposed by governments to curb the outbreak, and the de facto reduction in human mobility/lockdown effect on global agricultural trade through the end of 2020. We find that while agricultural trade remained quite stable through the pandemic, the sector as a whole did not go unscathed. First, we estimate that COVID-19 reduced agricultural trade by the approximate range of 5 to 10 percent at the aggregate sector level; a quantified impact two to three times smaller in magnitude than our estimated impact on trade occurring in the non-agricultural sector. Second, we find sharp differences across individual commodities. In particular, we find that non-food items (hides and skins, ethanol, cotton, and other commodities), meat products including seafood, and higher value agri-food products were most severely impacted by the pandemic; however, the COVID-19 trade effect for the majority of food and bulk agricultural commodity sectors were found to be insignificant, or in a few cases, positive. Finally, we also examine the effects across low vs high income countries, the changing dynamics of the pandemic's effect on trade flows, and the effects along the extensive product margins of trade.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Towards a More Efficient Tariff Rate Quota Regime: Evidence from Chinese Firm-Level Grain Imports
    Xie, Chaoping (Virginia Tech, 2019-01-18)
    Pioneered by Bernard et al. (1995) and Melitz (2003), recent advances in the international economics literature emphasizing the role of firm-level productivity differences has shed new light on the dynamics of international trade. Despite gaining significant traction in the international economics literature, firm-level analysis in the agricultural economics literature is comparatively rare, particularly in an emerging, industrialized economy such as China. This dissertation consists of three essays that provide firm-level analysis on Chinese agricultural trade since China's accession to the world trade organization (WTO). In the first essay, I segment by ownership structure to examine the role of different firm types in Chinese agricultural trade and find that domestic, private firms dominate Chinese agricultural trade and contribute 60%, or $96 billion, of the agricultural trade growth over the 2000-2016 period. Furthermore, the results show that although the economic weight of the state sector is declining, the share of state-owned enterprises (SOE) in strategically important commodities, such as wheat, corn, and rice imports are consistently high. In the second essay, I develop an empirical strategy to break down China's agricultural import trade growth. The findings reveal that China's agricultural import growth is highly concentrated among a small group of firms, where the top 10% of Chinese agricultural importers account for nearly 90% of the country's agricultural imports. I also find evidence of significant agri-food product importer turnover as over 40% of new firms entering China's agricultural import market exited after just 1.7 years during our sample period. In the last essay, I evaluate the efficiency of a specific Chinese non-tariff measure (NTM), the tariff rate quota (TRQ), using Chinese firm-level data. Two key findings emerge from this analysis. First, unlike results from country-level analyses, I find that SOEs import quantities are more sensitive to price changes. Additionally, more SOEs import grains when the price differential between domestic and world markets increases. Second, I fail to find any causal difference in the SOE share of TRQ imports before and after the two previously mentioned policy events were implemented to promote the market orientation of Chinese grain imports