Working Papers

Work Rules in Port Productivity (under review)

Rules governing what firms can and cannot do are an important part of what unions do. In 2008, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union signed a contract agreeing ports on the US West Coast could automate terminals, recognizing there would be job losses. Using a new, ship-level dataset, I study changes in productivity after the signing and after one port automated. Productivity increased about 22% after the new contract. The port that did actually automate was 26% more productive than its peers. I find that the effects persist through the 2015 contract, and suggest possible ways employee-employer relations may alter outside the written contract.

Competition and Coordination in Infrastructure: Port Authorities' Response to the Panama Canal Expansion (JMP)

Who should build infrastructure and how much should they build? In the United States, transportation infrastructure decisions are mostly made at the state or local level. I study seaports during a period when those on the East Coast were making massive investments to prepare for the larger vessels that could navigate an expanded Panama Canal. If ports do not internalize their business-stealing effect on others, there may be overinvestment--especially with subsidization. With data on all container imports and capital costs of the major US ports, I estimate a model of the investment game that port authorities play with one another. Competing ports invest more than a social planner would, even allowing for deviations from profit maximization. In particular, the $1.7 billion expansion of the Port of New York and New Jersey would not have been chosen by a national authority. Social surplus would be over a billion dollars higher with coordination, the equivalent of about one year's worth of revenue for all the East Coast ports.

Works in Progress

Genetically Engineered Crop Diversity After Regulatory Changes (with Conor Ryan)

In industries with high sunk costs, regulations may affect not only the price but the types of products offered. For over thirty years, most genetically engineered seeds in the United States were corn, cotton, or soybean, three of the largest crops grown. Most of the products were put out by four or five multinational agrichemical companies. In 2021, the United States Department of Agriculture streamlined its approval for GE crops. This paper describes how the set of deregulated articles changed under the new regulations. I show four novel facts, most notably the growth in product diversity and the diversity of the researching institutions. Using data on cash receipts for different crops, I then show how the new regulations affected the minimum market size necessary for firms to engage in R&D.

Scale Economies and Alliances in Ocean Shipping (with Tom Holmes)

Map from Containerisation International 1980