Protectionism enjoys surprising popular support, in spite of deadweight losses. At the same time, trade barriers appear … existing models. The model predicts a Dracula effect: trade policy for a sector is less protectionist when there is more public … voters which explains both facts and predicts the pattern of trade policy across industries. In the model, each agent …

protectionist bias in majoritarian politics. When trade policy is chosen by the majority delegation and legislators in the minority … have limited means to influence choices, the parties announce trade policies that favor specific factors, and the expected … tariff or export subsidy is positive. Positions and expected outcomes monotonically approach free trade as party discipline …

We study the relationship between participation in free trade agreements (FTAs) and the sustainability of democracy …

gradual but persistent. This article reviews and synthesizes the literature on trends and fluctuations in market distortions … the extent of market distortions and the conditions under which reform may be feasible. …

Competition between opposing lobbies is an important factor in the endogenous determination of trade policy. This paper … investigates empirically the consequences of lobbying competition between upstream and downstream producers for trade policy. The … theoretical structure underlying the empirical analysis is the well-known Grossman-Helpman model of trade policy determination …

countries. We apply our model of foreign influence to the study of optimal trade policy. We derive a modified formula for the … relative to the influencing country and whenever natural trade barriers between the two countries are small. …

the power to negotiate international trade agreements. Under FTA, Congress can only approve or reject negotiated trade … implications of this institutional procedure for trade negotiations. We describe a simple two-country trade model, in which … industries are unevenly distributed across constituencies. In the foreign country, trade negotiating authority is delegated to …

government's choice of trade policy. In the political equilibrium, the interest groups bid for protection, and each group's offer … groups may in some cases prefer to have the government use trade policy to transfer income rather than more efficient means …

We develop a model where trade agreements - in addition to correcting terms-of-trade externalities - help governments … to commit vis-a-vis domestic industrial lobbies. We explore how trade liberalization is affected by the characteristics … exact tariff levels. We also find that trade liberalization is deeper when capital is more mobile across sectors. In a …

We analyse general equilibrium relationships between trade policy and the household distribution of income, decomposing … yields predictions regarding the linkages between trade protection, country characteristics and inequality in Heckscher …