Whimsy and Fragility in the "China Shock" Narrative: A Comment on Autor, Dorn, and Hanson (2013)
About this article
Abstract
Autor, Dorn, and Hanson (2013) argue that the "China shock" negatively affected the United States from 1990 to 2007. Borusyak et al.’s (2022) corrections to the research design reaffirm the impact of Chinese imports on the manufacturing share of employment, but negative effects on living standards—unemployment, labor force participation, wages, and household incomes—disappear. Subsequent findings reported by Autor et al. (2019; 2020; 2021) are similarly fragile. Furthermore, Autor et al.’s famous claim that Chinese imports caused "one-quarter" of all national job losses in manufacturing rested on the whimsical assumption that partial R2 could be used to scale up their local results. The “China shock” narrative thereby illustrates how the “credibility revolution” failed to take the con out of econometrics.
| Author |
|
|---|---|
| Keywords | China, deindustrialization, econometrics, trade, United States |
| Volume Number | 23 |
| Issue Number | 2 |
| Pages | 266–287 |
| File URL | Whimsy and Fragility in the "China Shock" Narrative: A Comment on Autor, Dorn, and Hanson (2013) |
| File Format | |
| Access | |
| Publication year | 2026 |
Flag this article
Start the discussion.
Be the first to share your thoughts below.
Log in to Journaltalk to discuss this article!
Jt Article Discussions
Most recent article-specific discussions at Journaltalk.