Dozens of scholars convened at the Maxwell School earlier this month to delve into complex, timely issues related to international trade, including the impact of increased imports from China on racial and ethnic inequality, the role of large firms in South Korea’s economic growth, and the relocation of global value chains to Mexico.

The 30th annual Empirical Investigations in International Trade Conference was jointly hosted by the Economics Department, the Maxwell School, the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs and the Whitman School of Management. Held Oct. 13-15, it featured topical sessions led by subject-area experts, including faculty from U.S. universities such as Georgetown, Purdue and Tufts, as well as the University of Nottingham in England and the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto in Canada.

Speakers also included representatives from the Bank of Canada, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the U.S. Census Bureau. Teresa Fort, associate professor of business administration at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, provided the keynote address. Fort researches international trade and industrial organization; her current work analyzes how technology affects firm-level offshoring and production fragmentation decisions, and the impact of these decisions on domestic employment and innovation. 

“The Maxwell School Economics Department has a long history of excellent scholarship and research in the field of international trade, including our Trade, Development and Political Economy (TDPE) seminar series, and we were a natural host for the conference, which rotates annually,” said Ryan Monarch, assistant professor of economics and director of the TDPE Working Group “It was a spectacular opportunity for faculty and students throughout the Maxwell School.”

Monarch organized the event with Tibor Besedeš of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Jon Haveman of the Forum for Research in Empirical International Trade. The conference’s program committee was comprised of Kristy Buzard, associate professor of economics and Melvin A. Eggers Economics Faculty Scholar; Devashish Mitra, professor and chair of economics and Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs; and Shafaat Yar Khan, assistant professor of economics.

Monarch, Buzard, Mitra and Khan chaired sessions at the conference. Buzard, Khan and Monarch additionally discussed papers on the program.

By Jessica Youngman