Matteo Maggiori Publications

Governments use their countries' economic strength from financial and trade relationships to achieve geopolitical and economic goals. We provide a model of the sources of geoeconomic power and how it is wielded. The source of this power is the ability of a hegemonic country to coordinate threats across disparate economic relationships as a means of enforcement on foreign entities. The hegemon wields this power to demand costly actions out of the targeted entities, including mark-ups, import restrictions, tariffs, and political concessions. The hegemon uses its power to change targeted entities' activities to manipulate the global equilibrium in its favor and increase its power. A sector is strategic either in helping the hegemon form threats or in manipulating the world equilibrium via input-output amplification. The hegemon acts a global enforcer, thus adding value to the world economy, but destroys value by distorting the equilibrium in its favor.

We empirically characterize how China is internationalizing its bond market by staggering the entry of different types of foreign investors into its domestic market and propose a dynamic reputation model to explain this strategy. Our framework rationalizes China's strategy as trying to build credibility as a safe issuer while reducing the cost of capital flight. We use our framework to shed light on China's response to episodes of capital outflows.