2020 Theses Doctoral

Essays on Financial Market and Trade Globalization

Wang, Yahui

This dissertation presents three essays in financial economics. The essays study the impact of trade globalization through the lens of the financial market. The first chapter investigates the effect of trade liberalization policy on firm value. I identify this effect by exploiting cross-sectional differences in firms' exposure to potential tariff hikes imposed on U.S. imports from China. I find that the Chinese equity market responded negatively to a major U.S.-China trade liberalization event in 2000, and the responses were driven by inefficient state-owned institutions. The analysis also implies that policy uncertainty elimination may generate distributional gains from market share reallocation. The second chapter focuses on the role of implicit protection from trade globalization and its impact on the U.S. equity market. The third chapter explores the consequences of the U.S.-China trade war.