Selected Research
Economics
Only words? How power in trade agreement texts affects international trade flows
The texts of international trade agreements are often copy-and-pasted from previous treaties. Large and rich countries are more likely to act as \rule-makers" who have an internally consistent treaty network, while smaller and poorer countries are more likely to be "rule-takers" whose treaties resemble those of their respective partners, but not their own. But does the copy-and-pasting of trade agreements affect international trade flows? I use a new text corpus of machine-readable trade agreement texts, Texts of Trade Agreements (ToTA), to study whether rule-makers benefit more from trade agreements than rule-takers. I build indicators of textual similarity between agreements that capture how much an agreement resembles each party's previous agreements and introduce them into a gravity model of international trade. I find that the exports of countries that had a greater influence on the treaty text increase more than their partners', which confirms the hypothesis that rule-makers benefit more than proportionally from trade agreements. In an "average" power relation, the rule-maker increases its exports by about 15.8%, while the rule-taker only increases its exports by about 9.3%. The effect is driven by the power of the importer, suggesting that powerful countries effectively restrict access to their markets. This result is robust to controlling for tariffs, difference in GDP and GDP per capita, and to including trade agreement xed e ects. A regression with lags and leads of the trade policy variables suggests that, unlike the agreement per se, the balance of power within the agreement is not endogenous to anticipated trade flows. The results highlight that the copy-and-pasting of trade agreements has real economic effects, suggesting that countries should carefully assess text proposals when negotiating a trade agreement.
Text-as-Data Analysis of Preferential Trade Agreements- Mapping the PTA Landscape
(joint work with Wolfgang Alschner and Dmitriy Skougarevskiy)
Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) form an intricate web that connects countries across the globe. In this article, we introduce a PTA text corpus and research tools for its fine-grained, automated analysis. Recent computational advances allow for efficient and effective content analysis by treating text as data. We digitize PTA texts and use textual similarity tools to assess PTA design patterns on the global, national, and chapter level. Our descriptive analysis reveals, inter alia, that PTAs are more heterogeneous as a group than, for instance, bilateral investment agreements, but that they converge in regional or inter-regional clusters of similarly worded agreements. Following our descriptive account, we provide three concrete, interdisciplinary examples of how text-as-data analysis can advance the study of trade economics, politics, and law. In trade economics, similarity measures can provide more detailed representations of PTA design differences. These allow researchers to capture more meaningful variation when studying the economic impact of PTAs. In trade politics, scholars can use treaty similarity to trace design diffusion more accurately and test competing explanations for treaty design choices. Finally, in trade law, similarity measures offer new insights into the processes of normative convergence between legal regimes such as trade and investment law.
UNCTAD Research Paper No. 5, UNCTAD/SER.RP/2017/5
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2999800
Gender Roles and the Formation of Beliefs on Economic Inequality: Evidence from Rural India
This paper studies how people form beliefs on inequality, and whether this process differs between men and women. I use data from rural Chhattisgarh, India, to revisit theories of belief formation through learning and motivated beliefs. I find that people's beliefs on the importance of effort in determining economic outcomes are not correlated with their objective income, contrary to what learning theories would expect. However, I find that the subjective assessment of household income is correlated with beliefs in meritocracy for men, but not for women. Furthermore, men's self-assessment of their household's economic situation is not correlated with its objective counterpart (income). For women, the two measures are strongly correlated. These findings can be interpreted from the perspective of "motivated beliefs". Both men and women want to believe in a "just world", in which effort is rewarded. The process of belief formation interacts with gender roles in society. Both, men and women, want to conform to the role prescribed to their gender by society. For men, the desire to be a succesful "breadwinner" requires them to adjust their perception of their household's economic situation if they want to believe in a "just world" and feel good about their own contribution, while for women, this is not the case.
Conflict, Access to Markets and Self-Employed Shopkeepers in Rural Peru
This paper examines how violent conflict affects the decision to become a self-employed shopkeeper or vendor, proposing reduced access to markets through road insecurity as a new channel of conflict transmission. In a conflict situation, the risk of road assaults increase the cost of transporting goods. The impact of distance to the next market on the probability of opening a shop is thus expected to differ between conflict and non-conflict districts. I test this prediction in the context of the Peruvian armed internal conflict. I find that the probability of opening a shop decreases with distance to the next market in conflict districts, and that this effect is exacerbated in districts with high conflict intensity and long conflict duration. Several robustness checks provide further support to this result, showing that the result is not driven by geographic and cultural similarities of districts closer to the epicenter of the conflict or by general effects on self-employment.
Anthropology
L'usage des gains exclusifs dans le service public burkinabè. Réflexions autour de la dépendance des usagers.
Etude Récit 34
Laboratoire Citoyennetés
http://www.labo-citoyennete.org/attachments/article/166/169_ETU34_GainsExclusifs_Seiermann_BF_OPT.pdf
Economics
Only words? How power in trade agreement texts affects international trade flows
The texts of international trade agreements are often copy-and-pasted from previous treaties. Large and rich countries are more likely to act as \rule-makers" who have an internally consistent treaty network, while smaller and poorer countries are more likely to be "rule-takers" whose treaties resemble those of their respective partners, but not their own. But does the copy-and-pasting of trade agreements affect international trade flows? I use a new text corpus of machine-readable trade agreement texts, Texts of Trade Agreements (ToTA), to study whether rule-makers benefit more from trade agreements than rule-takers. I build indicators of textual similarity between agreements that capture how much an agreement resembles each party's previous agreements and introduce them into a gravity model of international trade. I find that the exports of countries that had a greater influence on the treaty text increase more than their partners', which confirms the hypothesis that rule-makers benefit more than proportionally from trade agreements. In an "average" power relation, the rule-maker increases its exports by about 15.8%, while the rule-taker only increases its exports by about 9.3%. The effect is driven by the power of the importer, suggesting that powerful countries effectively restrict access to their markets. This result is robust to controlling for tariffs, difference in GDP and GDP per capita, and to including trade agreement xed e ects. A regression with lags and leads of the trade policy variables suggests that, unlike the agreement per se, the balance of power within the agreement is not endogenous to anticipated trade flows. The results highlight that the copy-and-pasting of trade agreements has real economic effects, suggesting that countries should carefully assess text proposals when negotiating a trade agreement.
Text-as-Data Analysis of Preferential Trade Agreements- Mapping the PTA Landscape
(joint work with Wolfgang Alschner and Dmitriy Skougarevskiy)
Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) form an intricate web that connects countries across the globe. In this article, we introduce a PTA text corpus and research tools for its fine-grained, automated analysis. Recent computational advances allow for efficient and effective content analysis by treating text as data. We digitize PTA texts and use textual similarity tools to assess PTA design patterns on the global, national, and chapter level. Our descriptive analysis reveals, inter alia, that PTAs are more heterogeneous as a group than, for instance, bilateral investment agreements, but that they converge in regional or inter-regional clusters of similarly worded agreements. Following our descriptive account, we provide three concrete, interdisciplinary examples of how text-as-data analysis can advance the study of trade economics, politics, and law. In trade economics, similarity measures can provide more detailed representations of PTA design differences. These allow researchers to capture more meaningful variation when studying the economic impact of PTAs. In trade politics, scholars can use treaty similarity to trace design diffusion more accurately and test competing explanations for treaty design choices. Finally, in trade law, similarity measures offer new insights into the processes of normative convergence between legal regimes such as trade and investment law.
UNCTAD Research Paper No. 5, UNCTAD/SER.RP/2017/5
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2999800
Gender Roles and the Formation of Beliefs on Economic Inequality: Evidence from Rural India
This paper studies how people form beliefs on inequality, and whether this process differs between men and women. I use data from rural Chhattisgarh, India, to revisit theories of belief formation through learning and motivated beliefs. I find that people's beliefs on the importance of effort in determining economic outcomes are not correlated with their objective income, contrary to what learning theories would expect. However, I find that the subjective assessment of household income is correlated with beliefs in meritocracy for men, but not for women. Furthermore, men's self-assessment of their household's economic situation is not correlated with its objective counterpart (income). For women, the two measures are strongly correlated. These findings can be interpreted from the perspective of "motivated beliefs". Both men and women want to believe in a "just world", in which effort is rewarded. The process of belief formation interacts with gender roles in society. Both, men and women, want to conform to the role prescribed to their gender by society. For men, the desire to be a succesful "breadwinner" requires them to adjust their perception of their household's economic situation if they want to believe in a "just world" and feel good about their own contribution, while for women, this is not the case.
Conflict, Access to Markets and Self-Employed Shopkeepers in Rural Peru
This paper examines how violent conflict affects the decision to become a self-employed shopkeeper or vendor, proposing reduced access to markets through road insecurity as a new channel of conflict transmission. In a conflict situation, the risk of road assaults increase the cost of transporting goods. The impact of distance to the next market on the probability of opening a shop is thus expected to differ between conflict and non-conflict districts. I test this prediction in the context of the Peruvian armed internal conflict. I find that the probability of opening a shop decreases with distance to the next market in conflict districts, and that this effect is exacerbated in districts with high conflict intensity and long conflict duration. Several robustness checks provide further support to this result, showing that the result is not driven by geographic and cultural similarities of districts closer to the epicenter of the conflict or by general effects on self-employment.
Anthropology
L'usage des gains exclusifs dans le service public burkinabè. Réflexions autour de la dépendance des usagers.
Etude Récit 34
Laboratoire Citoyennetés
http://www.labo-citoyennete.org/attachments/article/166/169_ETU34_GainsExclusifs_Seiermann_BF_OPT.pdf