I am a PhD candidate at the Department of Economics of the Pennsylvania State University.
My research interest is in international trade. My research mainly focuses on how production networks and firm-to-firm relationships can change the policy implications of standard international trade models.
You can find my CV here
You can find my job market paper here
Reach me at hzk80@psu.edu
Working paper
It’s Worse than You Think: On the Consequences of the Chip Wars for U.S. Semiconductors
Trade policies during the U.S.-China Chip War have been criticized for harming U.S. semiconductor manufacturers. To formally quantify this effect, I develop a dynamic vertical production network model in which producers compete oligopolistically in both input and output markets, taking into account the market power of oligopolistic input suppliers and technical progress through learning by doing. Applying the model to the global production of memory chips, I find empirical patterns consistent with the model and use them to estimate its key parameters. The estimated model highlights that export controls raise unit delivery costs to third countries due to increased input costs and a slowdown in technical progress. Ignoring the market power of concentrated input suppliers leads to an understatement of the dampening effects of export controls on U.S. semiconductor production. Moreover, the effectiveness of the export controls—measured by the increase in China’s semiconductor price index—declines with each imposition, as U.S. semiconductor producers lag in technical progress and capture smaller shares of the output market over time.
Work in progress
Trade, Multinational Production, and Regional Inequality (with Mira Rim)
Globalization often brings openness to trade and multinational production (MP) together, but their combined effects on regional economies are not yet fully understood. We study how China’s openness to trade and MP affected regional inequality in Korea, focusing on population distribution and welfare. To analyze this, we develop a multi-country, multi-sector general equilibrium model that incorporates international trade, MP, and internal migration. Our model captures two opposing effects of Korea’s increasing MP in China. On one hand, MP may reduce labor demand in Korea as firms relocate production. On the other hand, through vertical fragmentation—where Korean firms producing in China source inputs from Korea—it may increase labor demand in Korea. Additionally, welfare effects may vary across worker groups, which are defined by their region of origin. This variation arises because workers have different sector-specific productivity across regions, and migration costs limit their ability to move between regions. A counterfactual analysis of the China Shock shows that while Korea experiences aggregate welfare gains, these are unevenly distributed across worker groups. As a result, some regions attract more migrants than others.
Intermediary Trade of Petrochemical Products (with Yang Shen)
We present new empirical evidence on intermediary trade in petroleum chemical products by examining the triadic relationship among buyers, sellers, and an intermediary. Utilizing a unique, transaction-level dataset obtained from a single intermediary, we outline descriptive patterns of intermediated trade and furnish regression results that highlight the role of triadic geographical distances in shaping trade outcomes. By extending the conventional gravity model to include intermediary effects, our analysis provides a more nuanced understanding of global value chains and offers significant implications for trade policy.