Research and Publications

Grounded in the strong University of California research tradition, our projects encompass a range of topics that reflect our mission and research objectives at the Center for Commerce and Diplomacy.

CCD Sponsored Research Highlights

• To help define the role that the scholarly community can play in sustaining global economic cooperation, Lawrence Broz and  Renee Bowen prepared a research paper titled, “Designing an International Economic Order: A Research Agenda.” The paper shows how social scientists can contribute to the reform and improvement of global institutions and provides a detailed application to the current crisis at the World Trade Organization.
  Renee Bowen presented the paper at the conference on the Political Economy of International Organizations on February 22, 2020 at the University of British Columbia. Lawrence Broz also presented it at an invited lecture at the University of Colorado, Boulder on January 17, 2020.
• Renee Bowen and Lawrence Broz are collaborating with UCSD trade economist Marc Muendler and UC San Diego Ph.D. student Bertrand Wilden to explore the impact of the World Trade Organization on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Their motivation is to understand why the current U.S. administration has taken actions that have rendered the WTO’s Appellate Body inoperable. Preliminary results suggest that part of the answer is that Appellate Body decisions have disproportionately affected U.S. industries located in industrial swing states. We find that Donald Trump received more support in counties with higher shares of employment in industries that were adversely affected by WTO Appellate Body decisions, other factors considered. This research is important because it connects the actions of an international organization to domestic election outcomes for the very first time. We expect to complete a first draft in Summer 2020.

Recent Publications

• 2020, "A Little Bit of Cheap Talk is a Dangerous Thing: States Can Communicate Intentions Persuasively and Raise the Risk of War.," The Journal of Politics, online first. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/709145
• John Ahlquist. "Work and Workers in International Markets". prepared for the Oxford Handbook of International Political Economy. Jon Pevehouse and Leonard Seabrook, eds.
• John Ahlquist and Layna Mosley. "Firm participation in voluntary regulatory initiatives: the Accord, Alliance, and US garment importers from Bangladesh." forthcoming. Review of International Organizations. 
• John Ahlquist, Arturas Rozenas and Shahryar Minhas. 2019. "Modeling Asymmetric Relationships from Symmetric Networks." Political Analysis.
• Lawrence Broz, Jeffry Frieden and Stephen Weymouth. “Populism in Place: The Economic Geography of the Globalization Backlash” International Organization, forthcoming 2020.
• Cheng, Hong, Ruixue Jia, Dandan Li, and Hongbin Li. 2019. "The Rise of Robots in China." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33 (2): 71-88.
• Darin Christensen and Francisco Garfias. "The Politics of Property Taxation: Fiscal Infrastructure and Electoral Incentives in Brazil," The Journal of Politics, forthcoming.
• Francisco Garfias. "Elite Coalitions, Limited Government, and Fiscal Capacity Development: Evidence from Bourbon Mexico," The Journal of Politics, Vol. 81, No. 1, 2019, pp. 94--111. Winner of the Best Article Award, APSA Democracy and Autocracy Section. 
• Francisco Garfias and Emily A. Sellars. "From Conquest to Centralization: Domestic Conflict and the Transition to Direct Rule," The Journal of Politics, forthcoming.
• LaGina Gause. "Revealing Issue Salience via Costly Protest: How Legislative Behavior following Protest Advantages Low-Resource Groups" (Accepted, British Journal of Political Science). Online Appendix.
• Emilie Hafner-Burton, Lauren E. Ferry, and Christina J. Schneider. 2020. “Catch Me if You Care: International Development Organizations and National Corruption.” The Review of International Organizations (forthcoming).
• Improving last-mile service delivery using phone-based monitoring. Forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. With Karthik Muralidharan and Sandip Sukhtankar and Jeff Weaver
• Ruixue Jia & Huihua Nie & Wei Xiao, 2019. "Power and publications in Chinese academia," Journal of Comparative Economics.
• Ruixue Jia, Hyejin Ku, Is China's Pollution the Culprit for the Choking of South Korea? Evidence from the Asian Dust, The Economic Journal, Volume 129, Issue 624, November 2019, Pages 3154–3188.
• Ruixue Jia, Torsten Persson, Choosing Ethnicity: The Interplay between Individual and Social Motives, Journal of the European Economic Association.
• David A. Lake. "Economic Openness and Great Power Competition: Lessons for China and the United States, Chinese Journal of International Politics." Forthcoming.
• Munseob Lee and David Argente. Cost of Living Inequality during the Great Recession, Journal of the European Economic Association. Forthcoming.
• Agustina S. Paglayan. The Non-Democratic Roots of Mass Education: Evidence from 200 Years. Forthcoming. American Political Science Review - APSA 2019 Best Comparative Policy Paper Award
• Lauren Prather and Sarah Bush. "Do Electronic Devices in Face-to-Face Interviews Change Survey Behavior? Evidence from a Developing Country." 2019. Research & Politics, 6(2): 1-7.
• Lowes, Sara, and Eduardo Montero. 2019. “Traditional Medicine in Central Africa.” American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings 109: 516–520. Publisher's Version
• Meijers, Maurits J., Christina J. Schneider, and Asya Zhelyazkova. 2020. “Mapping Channels of Responsiveness in the European Union: Actors, Publics, Venues.” Journal of European Public Policy 26(11): 1724-1736.
• Marc Muendler, Costas Arkolakis and Sharat Ganapati. January 2019. The Extensive Margin of Exporting Products: A Firm-level Analysis (AEJ: Macroeconomics - Conditionally Accepted)
• James Rauch. “History Dependence, Cohort Attachment, and Job Referrals in Networks of Close Relationships.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 170 (February 2020): 75-95.
• Christina J. Schneider. 2020. “Public Commitments as Signals of Responsiveness in the European Union.” The Journal of Politics 82(1): 329-344.
• Christina J. Schneider. 2019. Euroscepticism and Government Accountability in the European Union. The Review of International Organizations 14(2): 2017-238.
• Joel Watson, Heidi Gjertsen, Theodore Groves, David A. Miller, Eduard Niesten, and Dale Squires. "The Optimal Structure of Conservation Agreements and Monitoring," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization (2021, in press).
• Joel Watson, David Miller and Trond Olsen.“Relational Contracting, Negotiation, and External Enforcement,” The American Economic Review 110 (2020 Issue 7): 2153–2197.
• Joel Watson. "On the Outside-Option Principle with One-Sided Options," Economics Letters (2020, in press).
• Joel Watson and Jesse Bull.  ''Statistical Evidence and the Problem of Robust Litigation," The RAND Journal of Economics 50 (2019, Issue 4, Winter): 974-1003.

Working Papers

• Renee Bowen, Ilwoo Hwang and Stefan Krasa. “Learning in Multi-Issue Bargaining.”
• Renee Bowen, Danil Dmitriev and Simone Galperti. ”Learning from Shared News: when Abundant Information Leads to Belief Polarization.”
• Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, Heidi M. McNamara and Christina J. Schneider. “(In)Credible Commitments? International Organizations and Foreign Direct Investment."
• Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, Edward Mansfield and Jon Pevehouse.“Rhetoric and Reality: International Organizations, Sovereignty Costs, and Human Rights."
• Federica Izzo. “Ideology for the Future.”
• Federica Izzo. “With Friends like These, Who Needs Enemies?”
• Federica Izzo. “Do We Get the Best Candidates When We Need Them the Most?”
• Ruixue Jia and Ying Bai. "The Economic Consequences of Political Hierarchy: Evidence from Regime Changes in China, AD1000-2000." 
• Ruixue Jia, Xiaohuan Lan and Gerard Padró I Miquel. “Doing Business in China: Parental Background and Government Intervention as Determinants of Entrepreneurship.” (slides)
• Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li. "Just Above the Cutoff: The Return to Elite Education in China." Revise and resubmit. Journal of Public Economics.
• Munseob Lee, David Argente and Chang-Tai Hsieh. "The Cost of Privacy: Welfare Effects of the Disclosure of COVID-19 Cases." 
• Munseob Lee, David Argente and Sara Moreira. The Life Cycle of Products: Evidence and Implications, online appendix.
• Munseob Lee, David Argente and Chang-Tai Hsieh. Measuring the Cost of Living in Mexico and the US.
• Paasha Mahdavi, Christina J. Schneider, and Jennifer L. Tobin. ” Coordinated Financial Rescues.” September, 2019.
• Paul Niehaus, Dennis Egger, Johannes Haushofer, Ted Miguel and Michael Walker. General equilibrium effects of cash transfers: experimental evidence from Kenya (.bib). Revise and resubmit. 
• Paul Niehaus, Karthik Muralidharan and Sandip Sukhtankar.  Identity verification standards in welfare programs: experimental evidence from India (.bib). 
• Paul Niehaus. A theory of good intentions (.bib).
• Paul Niehaus, Karthik Muralidharan and Sandip Sukhtankar  General equilibrium effects of (improving) public employment programs (.bib; online appendix).
• Nico Ravanilla. 2020. “Can We Encourage Publicly Motivated Citizens to Run for Office?: Evidence from a Leadership Training Workshop for First-Time Political Candidates​."
• Nico Ravanilla, R Sexton, D Haim. Working Paper 2020. "Deadly Populism: How Local Political Outsiders Drive Duterte’s War on Drugs in the Philippines.”

Books

• James Rauch. The Economics of the Middle East: A Comparative Approach, New York: Oxford University Press, 2019

Book Chapters

• Lowes, Sara, and Nathan Nunn. In Preparation. “Does Bride Price Promote or Hinder Women's Well-Being?” Gender and Development, edited by Siwan Anderson, Lori Beaman, and Jean-Philippe Platteau. UNU-Wider. Publisher's Version
• Munseob Lee and Gaurav Khanna. High-Skill Immigration, Innovation, and Creative Destruction, In: The Roles of Immigrants and Foreign Students in US Science, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship. University of Chicago Press, February 2020, pp.73-98.

Policy Papers

• Broz, J. Lawrence and Zhiwen Zhang. April 2018. "China’s Global Economic Leadership: Who are the Followers?"

Research Projects Underway

• Domestic Politics of Escape Clauses in International Trade Agreements
  Professors Renee Bowen and Lawrence Broz; and Graduate Student Researcher Amir Fahrai