We provide a theory to explain the existence of inequality in an economy where agents have identical preferences and have access to the same production technology. Agents consume a "utility" good and a "health" good which determines their subjective discount factor. Depending on initial...

This paper asks whether the results obtained from using the standard approach to testing the influential Grossman and Helpman %u201Cprotection for sale (PFS)%u201D model of political economy might arise from a simpler setting. A model of imports and quotas with protection occurring in response...

This paper proposes a new test of the Protection for Sale (PFS) model by Grossman and Helpman (1994). Unlike existing methods in the literature, our approach does not require any data on political organization. We use quantile and quantile IV regressions to do so using the data from Gawande and...

This paper proposes a new test of the Protection for Sale (PFS) model by Grossman and Helpman (1994). Unlike existing methods in the literature, our approach does not require any data on political organization. We use quantile and quantile IV regressions to do so using the data from Gawande and...

"This paper critically and selectively surveys the literature on protection for sale and discusses directions for future research in this area. It suggests that the standard approach needs to be augmented to provide more compelling tests of this model"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"This paper proposes a new test of the Protection for Sale (PFS) model by Grossman and Helpman (1994). Unlike existing methods in the literature, our approach does not require any data on political organizations. We formally show that the PFS model predicts that the quantile regression of the...