Welcome to my website!

I am a third-year PhD student in Economics at the University of Cambridge.

My research interests include international economics and macroeconomics.

In my research, I study individual firm decisions at the micro-level, and the implications for resource allocation and inflation dynamics at the macro-level.

Prior to PhD study, I received MSc in Economics from London School of Economics in 2021 and BA in Economics from National Tsing Hua University in 2020.


Contact information:

chc83@cam.ac.uk 

Faculty of Economics, Austin Robinson Building, 

Sidgwick Avenue,

Cambridge, CB3 9DD


Linkedin 

Work in progress

Abstract: By diverting and distorting bilateral trade flows, trade wars shift export patterns and market concentration around the globe. In this paper, we estimate parameters in n-country general equilibrium trade model featuring oligopolistic competition with data from a rich panel of firm-level exports from 11 low and middle-income countries to 165 destinations that report bilateral and multilateral tariffs to the World Trade Organization. Our analysis emphasizes the importance of firm entry into and exit from relatively concentrated product markets at the level of origin-destination country pairs.  The impact of a trade war on welfare and prices is dominated by the entry, exit, and pricing decisions by a few large, productive firms. These decisions have first-order effects on the reallocation of market power among firms within and across borders.


Abstract: This paper uses matched UK administrative data to investigate the impact of trade shocks on R&D investments of UK manufacturing firms between 2002 and 2011. We specifically focus on the controversial effect of Chinese import competition on firm innovation. Our analysis presents strong evidence that the surge in imports from China, following its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, significantly reduced R&D spending among UK firms. Notably, there is substantial heterogeneity in this effect across different firm sizes. Chinese competition had a particularly detrimental effect on R&D in small firms, while its impact on large firms was not significant. We also document the positive role of export market size in stimulating firm R&D, indicating that the booming export demand during the period somewhat mitigated the negative impact of Chinese competition.


Policy work

Abstract: Connector economies, those not strongly aligning themselves with the US or China, play an increasingly important role in intermediating trade and investment against the backdrop of rapid geopolitical fragmentation. FDI between geo-politically distant blocs fell by 30% relative to within-bloc flows after Q1 2022, while flows to connector economies kept up with within-bloc investment. In a triple-differenced setting, we show that connector economies benefiting most from shifting investment patterns enjoy one or more distinct competitive advantages related to: (i) manufacturing capabilities; (ii) indirect access to major markets; (iii) geographical, cultural and political proximity to major geopolitical rivals; and (iv) the use of special economic zones (SEZs). With rising geopolitical fragmentation, investors make greater use of SEZs and we show that cross-bloc investment in SEZs did not decline relative to within-bloc investment. 

Teaching