This paper examines voting by members of Congress on three trade bills introduced in 1993 and 1994: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the agreements concluded in the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations (GATT), and most-favored nation status for China. We first review...

This paper examines voting by members of Congress on three trade bills introduced in 1993 and 1994: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the agreements concluded in the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations (GATT), and most-favored nation status for China. We first review...

Proposals for campaign finance reform are essentially based on the belief that political influence can be bought with financial donations to a candidate's campaign. But do contributions really influence the decisions of legislators once they are in office? In this brief, Christopher Magee...

This paper estimates the effect that professors' opinions have on changes in student opinions during introductory economics classes. The paper shows that students are more likely to change their opinion during the course of the semester if their initial response differs from that of the...

This paper examines political action committees? motivations for giving campaign contributions to candidates for political office. First, the paper estimates the effect of campaign contributions received by candidates on the outcomes of the 1996 elections to the U.S. House of Representatives....

The paper uses a political economy framework to explain the empirical observation that trade protection is persistent. The assumptions that are shown to generate endogenous tariff persistence in the model are quite plausible: Agents are uncertain about future prices, tariffs are affected by...

There is still disagreement among economists concerning how a country's international economic policies and its rate of economic growth interact, despite a number of multi-country case studies utilizing comparable analytical frameworks, numerous econometric studies using large cross-country data...

This paper presents a comprehensive but relatively brief historical survey of U.S. trade-policy over the last 75 years. It is aimed at individuals who are not already familiar with the concepts and terminology used in discussions of trade policy and the domestic and international institutional...