Alejandra Martinez
Research
Working papers
Trade Relationships During and After a Crisis: Evidence from Road Disruptions in Colombian Flower Exports (Job market paper)
I study the impact of an extreme weather event on international trade relationships. Exploiting variation in Colombian flower exporters' access to cargo terminals during an unprecedented La Niña season in 2010-11 when some roads became impassable, I find that exporter-importer relationships exposed to road disruptions became 7 percentage points less likely to end during the road disruptions. These results are driven by importers that can hedge against non-deliveries by relying on current relationships. A firm-level exposure measure shows that relationships linked to importers who cannot rely on other current relationships for sourcing are more likely to end. I present a theoretical framework that rationalises the decision to keep or replace a relationship based on (1) the relative cost of establishing a new trade relationship; and (2) firm profits affected by other exposed relationships. The findings shed light on the dynamics of international buyer-seller relationships in the context of extreme weather events. Link.
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Insights from firm-to-firm transaction data: reassessing buyer-seller networks
​The ability to access administrative data has enabled researchers to study and understand the nature of trade relationships. As more studies utilise firm-to-firm transaction data, they rely on the few countries that collect and allow access to it. In cases where firm-to-firm data are available on both sides of the transaction, foreign firms often lack unique identifiers, resulting in researchers relying on text algorithms to generate them, often leading to over-counting the number of foreign firms (Krizan et al., 2020). In this paper, I document systematic reporting patterns on foreign firm names that can facilitate researchers' efforts to develop unique identifiers from firm-to-firm administrative data. I use Colombian customs data, which provides the names of foreign firms and is easily accessible. I present long-term patterns of network statistics, which illustrate how networks changed over time. Finally, I discuss the limitations of using random matching models of link formation to predict relevant distribution statistics. Link (soon).
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Work in progress
Transitivity in Trade (with Carlo Perroni and Dennis Novy).
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Public Policy Publications
Other publications
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"How Global Value Chains Became Victims of Covid-19." Newspaper article published in The European Financial Review. Printed version April-May, 2020. with Elie Gershel and Isabelle Mejean. Link.