Garrick Blalock 

Assistant Professor
Department of Applied Economics and Management
Cornell University

contact information
C.V.

Teaching

AEM 4240: Management Strategy
AEM 4130: Business Strategy Research

 blalock photo

Biography

I was born in 1971 in Ithaca, New York, where my father was a graduate student in Cornell University's Department of Economics. After completing his degree, my father took a job as an economist at the International Monetary Fund and the family moved to the Washington, D.C. area. My first training in economics came from family dinner discussions. I was fortunate to attend the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a magnet school where most students wanted to become an engineer or scientist. I majored in applied mathematics at Yale University and continued the study of Japanese, which I started in high school. After graduation, I worked in Tokyo as an applications engineer for Motorola's Semiconductor Products Division (now Freescale Semiconductor) and then as a marketing engineer for a Silicon Valley startup.

Having remained interested in economics, in 1998 I enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. My dissertation examined the link between trade—imports, exports, and foreign direct investment—and technology acquisition by emerging market firms. Because productivity gains typically preceed wage increases, technology adoption is an important component of the effect of trade on living standards. My research finds evidence that trade does diffuse technology to emerging markets.

I met my wife, Kaori, who is Japanese, in San Francisco and we married in 2002. Soon after, my life came full circle when we moved to Ithaca and I became an assistant professor at Cornell. Our daughter, Natalie, was born in 2006 in the same hospital in which I was born. Outside of work and family, my main interest is tennis. I am a fan of Cornell's varsity team and the faculty advisor to Cornell Club Tennis.

Research

Note that title links for published work contain the digital object identifier (DOI), which will direct you to the copyright holder's website. You may need to view that website from a subscribing library or institution to obtain the full article. Alternatively, you may email me to request a copy. Title links for work that is unpublished or still forthcoming will directly downloaded the paper.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
  1. "Financial Constraints on Investment in an Emerging Market Crisis" with Paul J. Gertler and David I. Levine, Journal of Monetary Economics, April 2008, 55(3), 568–591.
  2. "Do All Firms Benefit Equally from Downstream FDI? The Moderating Effect of Local Suppliers' Capabilities on Productivity Gains," with Daniel H. Simon, forthcoming, Journal of International Business Studies.
  3. "A Firm-Level Examination of the Exports Puzzle: Why East Asian Exports Didn’t Increase After the 1997–1998 Financial Crisis?" with Sonali Roy, The World Economy, January 2007, 30(1), 39–59.
  4. "Welfare Gains from Foreign Direct Investment through Technology Transfer to Local Suppliers" with Paul J. Gertler, Journal of International Economics, March 2008, 74(2), 402–421.
  5. "Imports, Productivity Growth, and Supply Chain Learning" with Francisco Veloso, World Development, July 2007, 35(7), 1134–1151.
  6. "Learning from Exporting Revisited in a Less Developed Setting" with Paul J. Gertler, Journal of Development Economics, December 2004, 75(2), 397–416.
  7. "Driving Fatalities After 9/11: A Hidden Cost of Terrorism" with Vrinda Kadiyali and Daniel H. Simon, forthcoming, Applied Economics.
  8. "The Impact of Post 9/11 Airport Security Measures on the Demand for Air Travel" with Vrinda Kadiyali and Daniel H. Simon, Journal of Law and Economics, November 2007, 50(4), 731–755.
  9. "Hitting the Jackpot or Hitting the Skids: Entertainment, Poverty, and the Demand for State Lotteries" with David R. Just and Daniel H. Simon, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, July 2007, 66(3), 545–570.
  10. "How Firm Capabilities Affect Who Benefits from Foreign Technology" with Paul J. Gertler, forthcoming, Journal of Development Economics.
Book Chapters
  1. “Foreign Direct Investment and Externalities: The Case for Public Intervention,” with Paul J. Gertler. In Does FDI Promote Development?, Theodore H. Moran (editor). Institute for International Economics, Washington, D.C., 2005, 73–106.
Book Reviews
  1. "Review of Multinational Corporations in Indonesia and Thailand, Eric D. Ramstetter and Fredrik Sjoholm (eds)," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, August 2007, 43(2), 269–270.

Other Publications

A few articles I wrote for engineering trade magazines.
  1. "How To Estimate DSP Processor Performance" with Phil Lapsley, IEEE Spectrum, July 1996, 74–78.
  2. "Different Strategies Boost DSP's Abilities," Electronic Engineering Times, February 10, 1997, 68.
  3. "General-Purpose Microprocessors for DSP Applications: Consider the Trade-Offs," Electronic Design News, October 23, 1997, 165.