When is Trade Protection Good for Growth?

The empirical relationship between trade protection and economic growth is surprisinglyfragile, as shown in a number of other papers. After demonstrating this empiricalsensitivity, we address one possible explanation for these findings: that the relationshipis nonlinear. Following the endogenous growth literature, we test for the possibilitythat the relationship between trade barriers and growth is contingent on measures ofcomparative advantage. The findings suggest that these nonlinearities do in fact exist— in particular, the correlation between tariffs and growth is strongest and positive forcapital-abundant countries — and are robust to the choice of control variables....