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Reposted by Ahmad Lashkaripour

Thiru Balasubramaniam @thirugeneva.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Professor Robert Staiger, the Roth Family Distinguished Professor in the Arts and Sciences and Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, has been appointed as the new Chief Economist of the World Trade Organization. @wto.org

en.wikipedia.org

Robert W. Staiger - Wikipedia

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Jacob Edenhofer @jacobedenhofer.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

First instalment of my substack primer on right-wing populism in Europe is out. jacobedenhofer.substack.com/p/explaining...

jacobedenhofer.substack.com

Explaining the emergence and consolidation of right-wing populism: Part I

Stylised facts, or what has actually happened?

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

We’ve written a review on *New Industrial Policy* for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia. It offers a unified framework for analyzing IP effects and survey evidence from both ex post event studies and ex ante model-based evaluations of IP. 🧵thread on key takeaways (link below)

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

The *ex ante* approach, of course, has its own limitations. However, it can map out the frontier of policy outcomes. Strikingly, in many cases, even optimally designed policies yield only modest gains, which is informative in itself. link to article: alashkar.pages.iu.edu/New_Industri...

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

13. We then clarify the logic behind *ex ante* policy evaluation, a growing yet misunderstood method. At its core, this approach involves estimating elasticity parameters using in-sample price & quantity data, using them to simulate out-of-sample quantities under optimal prices

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

(b) Heterogeneous treatment effects Industrial policy is justified because the marginal return to adding resources (VMPL) differs across units. Otherwise, there's no rationale for policy. Hence, contexts where industrial policy is warranted are inevitably characterized by HTE.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

11. The identification challenges are twofold: (a) SUTVA violation By design, industrial policy reallocates factors to treated units by drawing them from non-treated units. So, spillover effects are inherent to the policy itself.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

10. Design-based evaluations face two challenges: measurement and identification. The measurement issue arises because VMPL is unobserved, while welfare evaluation boils down to whether the policy reallocates factors to high-VMPL sectors and firms or not

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

9. We review the empirical and quantitative examinations of industrial policy, classifying them into two groups: a) *ex post* evaluations using design-based methods such as DiD b) *ex ante* model-based evaluations of optimally designed policies

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

8. At a deeper level trade openness presents a dilemma for industrial policy effectiveness—a point more recently emphasized in the literature.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

7. Another important but often-overlooked point is that trade measures, such as import restrictions or export promotion, are rarely an optimal or efficient form of industrial policy.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

6. Open economies face additional challenges when designing IP: a. Trade introduces a *siphoning effect* where taxes paid by domestic households are partially used to subsidize consumption abroad via exports. b. Industrial policy distorts relative trade prices ---> disrupts the gains from trade

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

5. An economy-wide *optimal* policy is rarely implemented in practice. More often, a a few sectors are promoted in isolation (e.g., South Korea’s HCI drive). In such cases, the *constrained-optimal* policy depends on the upstreamness of the targeted industries.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

4. The *welfare gains* from optimal policy, however, depend on which sectors are promoted. If industrial policy promotes upstream sectors operating below their efficient scale, it would generate larger gains.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

3. We formalize this argument by deriving the optimal policy in a unified framework with various distortions and input-output networks. Contrary to common instinct, the optimal policy is *newtrok-blind* and *demand-blind*. It only depends on the size of the distortion wedge.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

2. We first outline the welfarist rationale for industrial policy: with externalities or market failures, the *value marginal product of labor (VMPL)* is different across sectors ---> Welfare can be improved by reallocating resources from low-VMPL to high-VMPL sectors.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Our paper on the long-term effects of the Trump 2 tariffs is out in the Journal of International Economics. We’ve made it open access: doi.org/10.1016/j.ji...

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Our paper on the long-term effects of the Trump 2 tariffs is out in the Journal of International Economics. We’ve made it open access: doi.org/10.1016/j.ji...

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Reposted by Ahmad Lashkaripour

NBER @nber.org · 10/08/2025

Developing a framework to examine how beneficial transport infrastructure investments are, as well as other transport policies, from Dave Donaldson www.nber.org/papers/w34096

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Reposted by Ahmad Lashkaripour

Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Our paper is officially out 🎉 We argue that climate clubs show promise: - A climate club with coordinated penalties could curb 68% of excess emissions from free-riding -Unilateral carbon tariffs? Not nearly as effective

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

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Reposted by Ahmad Lashkaripour

Econometrica @ecmaeditors.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

We study how trade policy can reduce global emissions. Unilateral carbon border taxes have limited efficacy at cutting foreign emissions. By contrast, coordinated trade penalties under a climate club prove highly effective. buff.ly/NEE3Uy8

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CESifo @cesifo.org · 04/06/2025

New Paper Alert!📢 "Making America Great Again? The Economic Impacts of Liberation Day Tariffs"👨‍🦰 by Anna Ignatenko @lashkaripour.bsky.social‬ Luca Macedoni @simonovska.bsky.social‬ This model estimates U.S. welfare and global employment under optimal tariff retaliation📉: www.ifo.de/en/cesifo/pu...

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Reposted by Ahmad Lashkaripour

Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

A new version of our trade war paper is out at the NBER this week. Key update: factoring in tariffs on intermediate inputs nearly wipes out any terms-of-trade gains from reciprocal tariffs and greatly amplifies the cost of retaliation for the US economy.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

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Reposted by Ahmad Lashkaripour

Farid Farrokhi @faridfarrokhi.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

For PhD students and scholars interested in joining: I will take part in teaching International Trade and the Environment at #PSESummerSchool (June 9-12). www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/en/summer-sc... Below is a description (1/6)

parisschoolofeconomics.eu

Program content - Paris School of Economics

The International Trade program offers an in-depth exploration of key topics related to global trade and economic policy.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

🚨 We just released a paper examining the long-terms economic impacts of "Liberation Day" tariffs. In summary: while these tariffs may help reduce the trade deficit, they will impose significant costs on the U.S. economy after retaliation by trade partners.

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Reposted by Ahmad Lashkaripour

Ina Simonovska @simonovska.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Retaliation hurts! Check out our new paper to see how costly it can be for the U.S. economy.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

We just posted a paper about the current tariffs. bsky.app/profile/lash...

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

6/ Bottomline: while tariffs might temporarily improve US terms of trade, they're inefficient for reducing deficits, and any gains disappear with retaliation - leaving everyone worse off. Link to paper: alashkar.pages.iu.edu/ILMS_tariff_...

alashkar.pages.iu.edu

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

5/ Tariff revenue impact? Even in the most favorable scenario, tariffs would finance only about 5-6.5% of the federal budget. Under retaliation, this drops to just 3%.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

4/ Here's the catch: any US welfare gains completely vanish under retaliatory scenarios. If trading partners retaliate, the US faces a welfare loss of nearly 1%. Remarkably, collective retaliation by all partners would offset nearly all of their initial welfare losses.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

3/ We find the USTR tariff design is actually suboptimal. An optimal tariff would be uniform at ~25% across all partners, not varied based on bilateral deficits as the Liberation Day tariffs are structured.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

2/ Without retaliation, the US might see modest welfare gains (1.1%) and reduced trade deficits (-35%). But this comes at a significant cost to trading partners, especially Canada, Mexico, and South American economies.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

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Reposted by Ahmad Lashkaripour

International and Monetary Economics Network @intmon.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

It's high time to have another look at interesting papers like this one! "The cost of a global tariff war: A sufficient statistics approach" by Ahmad Lashkaripour. Article in the J of Int Econ: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Working paper: alashkar.pages.iu.edu/Tariff_War_L...

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Joseph Shapiro @joseph-s-shapiro.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

🚨Incredible lineup at @nber.org conference this Thurs/Fri 3/20-21: **Energy Markets, Decarbonization, and Trade** 📑Agenda www.nber.org/conferences/... 🎥 Webstream www.youtube.com/nbervideos Organized w Natalia Ramondo, supported by @sloanfoundation.bsky.social

nber.org

Energy Markets, Decarbonization, and Trade, Spring 2025

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Feodora Teti @feodorateti.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

🚨New data alert! A beta version of the Global Tariff Database is now available! 🔗https://feodorateti.github.io 🔎If you're looking for cross-country data on bilateral tariffs, this might help you.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

1/ 🚨 Can the US coerce smaller countries into submission using tariff penalties? Recent events with Mexico & Canada suggest it is trying. But our latest research indicates these attempts will likely fail and isolate the US economy. Here's why:👇

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Full paper coauthored w/ Farid Farrokhi (conditionally accepted in Econometrica): “Can Trade Policy Mitigate Climate Change?" alashkar.pages.iu.edu/Farrokhi_Las...

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

6/ The bottom line: Unilateral US tariffs might cause short-term pain for targeted countries, but they will ultimately isolate the US economy. If the US wants to maintain global influence (climate or otherwise), it must foster trade with major partners.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

5/ Effective coercion requires coordination. We find that unless the US teams up with other superpowers (EU, China), trade penalties won't yield meaningful compliance even on climate action, let alone more contentious issues like trade imbalance.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

4/ We explored this in the context of climate policy, a less contentious policy area. Our analysis shows that the US alone doesn't have enough leverage to enforce global compliance through tariff penalties. Nor does the EU, or China for that matter.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

3/ Countries facing US tariffs aren't trapped. They can divert trade toward other major economies like China and the EU. The possibility of trade diversion dilutes the effectiveness of US penalties and weakens its trade leverage.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

2/ Our study, using a cutting-edge quantitative trade model, shows that "unilateral" tariffs fail to effectively coerce other nations, even when imposed by large countries. Why? Because trade diversion is less costly than submission.

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

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Ahmad Lashkaripour @lashkaripour.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

I’ve created a dashboard that projects potential GDP losses for countries if ongoing tariff escalations trigger a global trade war. I’ll be updating it soon with the latest data. alashkar.pages.iu.edu/GlobalTariff...

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Sareh Vosooghi @sarehvosooghi.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Looking forward to the talk by Farid Farrokhi (Boston College) @leuveneconomics.bsky.social on ‘A Framework for Integrating Climate Goals into Trade Agreements’ joint with @lashkaripour.bsky.social and Homa Taheri

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Isabela Manelici @imanelici.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Check out Issue 2 of the VoxDevLit on International Trade! VoxDevLits adjust to new evidence, so there's lots new to uncover in this new issue. I've practically rewritten the chapter on externalities and spillovers from trade & FDI, and I'm excited to do it all over again as new evidence comes in!🎯🔥

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