About

Ina Simonovska is an associate professor at the Department of Economics at UC Davis. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota, earned in 2009, along with a master's degree from the same institution. Her undergraduate studies were completed at McGill University, where she earned a B.A. in Economics and Finance with joint Honors in 2004. Professor Simonovska is a member of the California Governor's Council of Economic Advisors and serves as a non-resident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. She is affiliated with research institutions including the U.S.-based National Bureau of Economic Research, the European Centre for Economic Policy Research, and the German CESifo Institute. Her research focuses on international trade, finance, and macroeconomics, particularly examining the impact of trade frictions on prices, trade flows, and welfare; the effects of firms’ financing choices on growth and volatility; and the drivers of cross-border investment flows. Her work has been published in leading journals, received awards such as the Bhagwati Award, and has informed international trade policy.

Research topics

• International trade
• Financial system
• Actuarial science
• Economics
• Monetary economics
• International economics
• Finance
• Business

Selected publications

• Replication of "Firm-to-Firm Financial Linkages and Dollar Risk Transmission ", Journal of Financial Economics

  Mendeley Data · 2026-05-21

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  We study how U.S. dollar fluctuations transmit through domestic supply chains in emerging markets. Large firms borrow in foreign currency and extend trade credit to domestic partners, exposing the supply chain to exchange rate risk. We develop a model where financially constrained suppliers pass through shocks to buyers, while unconstrained firms absorb them. Using quarterly firm-level data from 19 emerging markets, we provide empirical evidence consistent with the model's predictions. We find that even highly exposed firms reduce trade credit only modestly following a depreciation, while accepting large profit losses, suggesting that firm-to-firm credit relationships partially shield downstream firms from financial shocks.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication of "Firm-to-Firm Financial Linkages and Dollar Risk Transmission ", Journal of Financial Economics

  Mendeley Data · 2026-05-11

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  We study how U.S. dollar fluctuations transmit through domestic supply chains in emerging markets. Large firms borrow in foreign currency and extend trade credit to domestic partners, exposing the supply chain to exchange rate risk. We develop a model where financially constrained suppliers pass through shocks to buyers, while unconstrained firms absorb them. Using quarterly firm-level data from 19 emerging markets, we provide empirical evidence consistent with the model's predictions. We find that even highly exposed firms reduce trade credit only modestly following a depreciation, while accepting large profit losses, suggesting that firm-to-firm credit relationships partially shield downstream firms from financial shocks.

  PublisherDOI

• Contract Enforcement and Young Firm Capital Structure: A Global Perspective

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2026-03-01

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  We develop a framework to measure the severity of financial constraints for young firms across countries.Using ORBIS balance-sheet data for 23 economies, we show that short-term leverage rises while long-term leverage falls early in firms' life cycles, with this pattern persisting longer where contract enforcement is weaker.We build a model of optimal financing under limited enforcement with endogenous debt maturity and blueprint capacity that matches these patterns and enables structural measurement of financial constraints.The framework decomposes the funding gap into within-firm borrowing constraints that ease with repayment history and a scale distortion identifiable through cross-country comparisons.

  PublisherDOI

• Data and codes used in the paper "Trade Models, Trade Elasticities, and the Gains from Trade" by Simonovska, I. and Waugh, M.E., published in the Journal of International Economics

  Mendeley Data · 2026-04-28

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This repository replicates all empirical and quantitative results in the paper and its appendices. The paper estimates the trade elasticity θ under five structural trade models — Armington, Eaton–Kortum (EK), BEJK, Krugman, and Melitz — using ICP price gap moments and bilateral trade flows for 30 countries in 2004, 2011, and 2017.

  PublisherDOI

• Data and codes used in the paper "Trade Models, Trade Elasticities, and the Gains from Trade" by Simonovska, I. and Waugh, M.E., published in the Journal of International Economics

  Mendeley Data · 2026-04-28

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This repository replicates all empirical and quantitative results in the paper and its appendices. The paper estimates the trade elasticity θ under five structural trade models — Armington, Eaton–Kortum (EK), BEJK, Krugman, and Melitz — using ICP price gap moments and bilateral trade flows for 30 countries in 2004, 2011, and 2017.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication of "Firm-to-Firm Financial Linkages and Dollar Risk Transmission ", Journal of Financial Economics

  Mendeley Data · 2026-05-21

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  We study how U.S. dollar fluctuations transmit through domestic supply chains in emerging markets. Large firms borrow in foreign currency and extend trade credit to domestic partners, exposing the supply chain to exchange rate risk. We develop a model where financially constrained suppliers pass through shocks to buyers, while unconstrained firms absorb them. Using quarterly firm-level data from 19 emerging markets, we provide empirical evidence consistent with the model's predictions. We find that even highly exposed firms reduce trade credit only modestly following a depreciation, while accepting large profit losses, suggesting that firm-to-firm credit relationships partially shield downstream firms from financial shocks.

  PublisherDOI

• Making America Great Again? The Economic Impacts of Liberation Day Tariffs

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-05-01 · 15 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  On April 2, 2025, President Trump declared "Liberation Day," announcing broad tariffs to reduce trade deficits and revive U.S. industry.We analyze the long-term economic impacts of these tariffs through the lens of a trade model that features flexible tariff passthrough and endogenous trade deficits, calibrated to trade and income data from 194 countries.If trading partners do not retaliate, the tariffs could decrease the U.S. trade deficit and improve its terms of trade, yielding modest welfare gains when tariff revenues reduce the income tax burden for American workers.However, reciprocal retaliation results in net welfare losses for the U.S. economy.We derive the unilaterally optimal tariff within our model and show that the USTR tariffs, based on bilateral deficits, differ markedly from this theoretical benchmark.Our calibrated model implies a unilaterally optimal tariff for the U.S. of 19 percent, uniformly applied across all trading partners, and linked to the overall trade deficit rather than bilateral imbalances.Under optimal foreign retaliation to the USTR tariffs, the calibrated model predicts a decline in U.S. welfare by up to 3.8 percent when accounting for input-output linkages, and a contraction in global employment by 1.1 percent.

  PublisherDOI

• Making America Great Again? The Economic Impacts of Liberation Day Tariffs

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Making America Great Again? The Economic Impacts of Liberation Day Tariffs

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Making America Great Again? The Economic Impacts of Liberation Day Tariffs

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Michael Waugh

  Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

  71 shared

• Joel M. David

  Inha University

  17 shared

• Ludvig Söderling

  International Monetary Fund

  6 shared

• Federico Etro

  University of Florence

  6 shared

• Ariel Weinberger

  George Washington University

  5 shared

• Paolo Bertoletti

  5 shared

• Jae Wook Jung

  Sogang University

  4 shared

• Espen Henriksen

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, Haas School of Busin…
• Institute of Social Sciences Individual Research Grant, UC D…
• Hellman Fellowship, University of California, Davis, 2014–20…
• Bhagwati Award for best paper in 2013-2014, Journal of Inter…
• Peter B. Kenen Fellowship, Princeton University, 2011–2012