Publications by PSE researchers

This article analyzes the effects of the acquisition of the Port of Piraeus by the Chinese shipping operator COSCO in July 2016 on the organization of container traffic in Europe. Using real-time container ship positions provided by vessel tracking systems between 2015 and 2019, we study the impact of the privatization of the Greek port on its attractiveness and on that of competing ports for the ships of the various operators, and more particularly of COSCO. Difference-in-difference estimates suggest that the number of container ship calls to the Port of Piraeus has increased following its privatization, but that this increase in attractiveness corresponds mainly to vessels operated by COSCO with a capacity of more than 3000 twenty-foot equivalent units, and in particular to the largest of them. We do not identify any crowding out effect between operators in Piraeus: the use of Piraeus by the vessels of other operators remains relatively unchanged. The privatization of Piraeus seems to have imposed the Greek port as COSCO's transhipment hub for the European market without this being to the detriment of ports in any other particular European area.

This paper analyzes the effects of a major reputational shock affecting textile importers from Bangladesh. The collapse of the Rana Plaza building in April 2013 generated a surge of activism and media coverage specifically targeting the firms that sourced from the factories affected by the disaster. Using monthly firm-level import data from French Customs, we study any potential disruption in these firms’ imports from all origins, and specifically from Bangladesh. We use a difference-in-differences approach. French textile imports from Bangladesh rose continuously after the shock, and the overall imports of retailers sourcing from the Rana Plaza show no drop after the event. Our results do reveal a relative decline in Bangladeshi imports for those retailers named for sourcing from the collapsed factories. This effect is mirrored by a relative increase in these exposed firms’ imports from four particular countries, which are non-Asian and are geographically closer to France.

To what extent do Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) monitor global value chains? While NGOs regularly denounce the behavior of multinational corporations throughout the world, their motivations for choosing campaign targets remain largely unknown. Using a new dataset on activists’ campaigns toward multinational firms, we estimate a triadic gravity equation for campaigns, involving the NGO, firm, and action countries. Our results point to a strong proximity bias in NGO activity: Distance, national borders, and lack of a common language all contribute to impede the intensity of campaigns. We estimate the distance elasticity of campaigns to be −0.2 and further document that NGOs strongly bias their actions toward home firms or foreign firms with home actions. A domestic firm is 3.45 times more likely to be attacked than a foreign one. Foreign firms headquartered in common language countries draw 1.63 times more campaigns. Overall, campaigns seem to be designed so as to include at least one element of proximity drawing the attention of consumers. This pattern questions the role of NGOs in the monitoring of multinational production operated in remote, unfamiliar locations.

China is often suspected of taking over the extraordinary trade relationships that former colonies had within colonial empires. Besides preferential bilateral relationships built after independence, the two other potential determinants of the increase in trade with China are the improvement in China’s export capacity and the natural redirection caused by independence. We investigate and quantify the three reasons that explain the level of former colonies’ trade flows with China. Using structural gravity equations, we show that methodological issues can be largely responsible for displaying and estimating abnormally high trade levels between former colonies and China. Increased trade between these pairs of countries is the result of unilateral factors rather than more intense bilateral preferences. We then measure the reorientation of trade flows from former colonies’ metropoles towards China and show that independence has produced the expected redistribution: trade flows with China would be 15% lower, had former colonies not become independent.

This paper studies the effect of social responsibility scandals on the imports of consumer products, by focusing on an event which generated massive consumer mobilization against neglecting firms, namely the collapse of the Rana Plaza building affecting the textile industry in Bangladesh. We investigate the import repercussions of this major shock in the perceived quality of clothing producers sourcing in Bangladesh. In line with the well-documented home bias in trade and home-country media slant, we assume that consumers’ reaction will be stronger when domestic firms are named and shamed. Our empirical strategy uses a difference-in-difference approach that compares imports from Bangladesh of countries according to whether some of their companies were directly associated with the collapse of the Rana Plaza. Our results are consistent with demand being sensitive to social responsibility scandals. While aggregate imports from Bangladesh continue to increase during the whole period (2010–2016), there is a marked disruption that affects countries whose brands were named and shamed by activists and the media after the disaster. In addition, the decline in imports is all the greater as the number of NGO campaigns on the misbehavior of national textile retailers is high.

This paper studies the effect of activism on the imports of consumer products, by focusing on an event which generated massive consumer mobilization against neglecting firms, namely the collapse of the Rana Plaza building affecting the textile industry in Bangladesh. We hypothesize that this episode was a main shock in the perceived quality of clothing producers sourcing in Bangladesh. Using detailed import flows on textile goods from OECD countries, we analyze whether the imports of consumer products were affected by the disclosure of information, in countries differently exposed to the collapse. To proxy the amount of information received by individuals in different countries, we use the nationality of the firms involved in the Rana Plaza building: soon after the disaster, NGOs and the media insisted on the origin countries of the neglecting companies, publishing the list of misbehaving firms by nationality. We use a difference-indifference approach to compare the imports from Bangladesh of countries having been differently associated in the news to the Rana Plaza collapse. Results show a post-disaster decrease in imports for countries whose firms were directly involved in the Rana Plaza building. The effect has to be interpreted relatively to the evolution of imports of similar countries, however not linked to the collapsed Rana Plaza knitting factories. While aggregate imports from Bangladesh continue to increase during the whole period (2010-2016), there is a marked disruption that affects countries whose brands were named and shamed by activists and the media after the disaster. No such differential pattern is observed for non-textile goods. Our results are robust to a variety of checks.

Activists monitoring global value chains are closely linked to international production and sales by companies. Academic research on international trade is however scarce in empirical work analyzing the behavior of these activists. The Sigwatch campaign database is a new and rich dataset listing campaigns launched by activists against multinational corporations. I provide explanatory notes on the raw data available for academics, and background information on the replication dataset for Hatte and Koenig (2017). Short descriptive statistics on campaigns are also presented.