Working Papers
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In Search of Demand Engines: Evidence from South Africa's Automotive Industrial Policy
Draft available upon request, Sep 2026
The use of export-led industrial policy is widespread across many poor countries, yet its effects on domestic supply chain development are believed to be limited, with benefits disproportionally accruing to large multinational enterprises (MNEs). This project investigates whether and how alternative models of industrial policy can promote deeper domestic industrialization, without undermining export performance. Focusing on South Africa’s 2013 Automotive Production and Development Program (APDP), I study a shift from export-led incentives to a novel system rewarding local value addition through import duty rebates on complementary input and output products. I first develop a simple framework of firms’ input sourcing decisions, showing that the APDP incentives introduce a kink in the firm’s input sourcing problem between local and foreign inputs, with implications for both the intensive and extensive margins of input demand. I then empirically study these predictions using a rich combination of administrative, survey and commercial data from South Africa. The results indicate that, in line with the policy objectives, downstream MNE assemblers significantly increased local value addition and grew in scale, mostly through demand for domestic inputs. In upstream segments, the policy jointly led to growth of incumbent component producers and large inflows of new entrants, together with a large increase in demand for imported inputs. To explain the latter finding, I document increased sales at the assembly stage, with a large share explained by the introduction of new and more advanced models for export. Additional results on component producers reveal several dimensions of firm upgrading in relatively more exposed firms. Overall, the results are consistent with a process of industrialization where demand from large domestic MNEs is able to sustain domestic firms' scale, but access to (high-quality) imported inputs is necessary to meet MNEs quality standards. These findings provide one of the first empirical assessments of production-led industrial policy and shed light on the role of MNEs as engines of demand in developing economies.
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Internal Migration, Local Development and Structural Change: Evidence from the Italian Golden Age
Draft available upon request, Jun 2026
How does internal migration shape structural transformation, and are its effects spatially even across space? We study this question in Italy during the Golden Age of the 1950s–1970s, when the country jointly experienced an unprecedented redistribution of population across provinces and persistent labor reallocation away from agriculture. Combining 25 years of detailed origin–destination migration flows with province-level economic outcomes, we first document a new empirical cross-sectional regularity: while local origin-destination flows are shown to follow the initial bilateral sectoral specialization, most of the long-distance flows are negatively correlated with the initial bilateral similarity, implying sectoral reallocation. Motivated by this fact, we next develop a simple framework of migrants' sorting where productivity at destination positively depends on origin-destination sectoral similarity. Taking this sorting into account, and building on recent advances in the shift-share IV literature, we next construct two instruments for short and long-distance flows based respectively on newly digitized data on Fascist-regulated migration flows and baseline bilateral railway distances. Consistent with the framework's predictions, we find evidence of sorting of industrial workers: while short-distance immigration played an important role in shaping local income growth, with most of the effects driven by productivity gains in receiving provinces, short-distance emigration generates losses of smaller magnitude in sending areas by reducing employment, value added and productivity. While a large share of migration flows was South-North, we find comparatively smaller effects for long distance moves. Overall, our findings show that internal migration can accelerate structural transformation at the aggregate level while generating uneven local consequences between the regions that gain and lose workers.
Work in Progress
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Green Industrial Policy: Firm-level Responses from India
Analysis in progress
Using data from India, we study firm-level responses to the 2010 Solar Mission, the country’s flagship green industrial policy initiative aimed at promoting the large-scale deployment of solar power and establishing India as a global leader in solar energy. Exploiting fine-grained geographic variation in solar potential, we first document a robust first-stage relationship between district-level solar potential and the subsequent deployment of large-scale solar capacity. We then examine downstream effects on upgrading among manufacturing firms. Consistent with a simple framework featuring complementarities in production, our preliminary results indicate increases in firm-level energy expenditure and energy intensity, together with expansions in sales and investment in capital equipment.
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Agricultural Productivity and Structural Change: Evidence from Italy's 2nd Green Plan
Data acquisition ongoing
We digitize the universe of individual-level records on subsidy recipients under Italy’s 2nd Agricultural Green Plan and combine them with municipality-level census and administrative data to study labor reallocation across sectors.