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.
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).
Work in progress
Transitivity in Trade (with Carlo Perroni and Dennis Novy).
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.