There seem to be many such papers. Here are four.
Shipping Costs and Inflation
The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted global supply chains, leading to
shipment delays and soaring shipping costs. We study the impact of
shocks to global shipping costs—measured by the Baltic Dry Index
(BDI)—on domestic prices for a large panel of countries during the
period 1992-2021. We find that spikes in the BDI are followed by
sizable and statistically significant increases in import prices, PPI,
headline, and core inflation, as well as inflation expectations. The
impact is similar in magnitude but more persistent than for shocks to
global oil and food prices. The effects are more muted in countries
where imports make up a smaller share of domestic consumption, and
those with inflation targeting regimes and better anchored inflation
expectations. The results are robust to several checks, including an
instrumental variables approach in which we instrument changes in
shipping costs with an indicator of closures of the Suez Canal.
Baltic Dry Index and the democratic window of opportunity
In their seminal paper, Brückner and Ciccone (2011) document that a
significant effect of democratic change may be triggered by negative
transitory economic shocks, and that rainfall can open a democratic
window of opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). As a complement,
this paper uses within-country variation in the Baltic Dry Index (BDI)
as a source of transitory negative income shocks to SSA countries. The
BDI reflects the cost of utilizing dry bulk carriers, which are
specially designed vessels for transporting primary goods
internationally, where these goods dominate the output and export
sectors of the SSA economies. We find that positive BDI cost shocks
are followed by significant contraction in income through trade
channel and significant improvement in democratic institutions, where
BDI can open a window of opportunity for democratic improvement.
Instrumental variables estimates indicate that following a negative
income shock of one percentage point, democracy scores improve by
around 4–5 percentage points on average.
Learning by exporting effect in China revisited: An instrumental Approach
Does exporting increase the firm’s productivity causally? Focusing
on Chinese exporters over the period 1998-2007, we construct a new
measure of firm-specific trade cost, based on the daily Baltic Dry
Index (BDI), as an instrument of exports. The BDI is termed a
leading trade cost indicator, reflecting the cost of utilizing dry
bulk carriers which primarily consists of materials that function as
raw material inputs to the production of finished goods. We find that
a one percentage point expansion in exports raises firm total factor
productivity by approximately 0.04 percentage point on average, which
accounts for nearly 60 percent growth of the exporter’s productivity
over the period 1999-2007.
Trade, Institution Quality and Income Inequality
To address this, we adopt an instrumental variable approach by using
two well-accepted trade cost variables in the literature as
instruments for trade: one is based on Baltic Dry Index (BDI) in
primary goods (Lin & Sim, 2013) and another is based on more than 20
primary commodity price index following Arezki and Brückner (2012).
