There is a growing number of studies that investigate the effect of trade liberalization on productivity and nearly all assume that trade policy is independently determined of productivity, hence it is exogenous. I show that this assumption is generally invalid both theoretically and...

In this paper, we examine trade policy determinants and trade reform in a developing country setting by using a political economy of trade policy model where the government determines tariffs by balancing the political support from the producers against consumers and places a higher political...

Two of the most important trade policy developments to take place since the 1980s are the expansion of preferential trade agreements and temporary trade barriers, such as antidumping, safeguards, and countervailing duties. Despite the empirical importance of preferential trade agreements and...

There has been a proliferation of preferential trade agreements within the last two decades. This paper analyzes the effects of free trade agreements (FTAs) on external tariffs in small economies where protection decisions are made politically. It extends the Grossman and Helpman (1995) model by...

In this paper, I start out with a standard political economy of trade policy model to guide the subsequent estimation of the determinants of trade policy in a developing country. I carefully test the model with Colombian data from 1983 to 1998 accounting for endogeneity and omitted variable bias...

Two of the most important trade policy developments to take place since the 1980s are the expansion of preferential trade agreements and temporary trade barriers, such as antidumping, safeguards, and countervailing duties. Despite the empirical importance of preferential trade agreements and...