Essays in industrial policy, international trade, and labour economics

This thesis studies how industrial policy and international trade reshape exports, cross-border spillovers, and labour market adjustment. It asks three related questions: whether China's high-technology industrial policy contributed to export expansion and industrial upgrading; whether these domestic policies generated spillovers for Germany through trade and input–output linkages; and how import competition affects workers' occupational mobility. The thesis combines policy data, international trade data, patent records, input–output linkages, and German administrative worker employment data to examine how policy and trade shocks operate through products, industries, and occupations. Chapter 2 studies China's high-technology industrial policy in the 2000s. I digitize successive revisions of a national policy catalogue, map targeted technologies and products to HS codes, and combine this product-level treatment measure with international trade data and patent records. Using staggered difference-in-differences designs, I show that targeted products experienced persistent export growth, stronger revealed comparative advantage, market upgrading, and increased patenting by Chinese applicants. These results suggest that industrial policy contributed to China's early industrial upgrading. Chapter 3 examines international spillovers to Germany. I combine the product-level policy measure with China–Germany bilateral trade data, input–output linkages, and German industry-level labour-market outcomes. The results show that China's industrial policy increased German imports of treated products from China while also raising German exports of treated advanced capital goods to China. German upstream industries benefited from stronger Chinese demand through higher exports, employment, and wages. Downstream industries faced greater import exposure, but adjusted mainly through changes in occupational composition rather than through large aggregate employment losses. Chapter 4 studies German worker adjustment to import competition using German administrative worker data linked to trade data. I construct occupation-level import exposure and estimate its effects on occupational mobility using a shift-share instrument. Import exposure increases occupational switching, but primarily through downward transitions into lower-paying occupations. These findings show that trade adjustment is not captured by employment changes alone: workers may remain employed while moving into lower-ranked jobs. Overall, the thesis highlights the importance of granular economic structures for understanding industrial policy, trade spillovers, and labour market adjustment.