Kee, Olarreaga, and Silva assess the foreign lobbying forces behind the tariff preferences that the United States grants to Latin American and Caribbean countries. The authors extend the basic framework developed by Grossman and Helpman (1994) to explain the relationship between foreign lobbying...

This paper assesses the foreign lobbying forces behind the tariff preferences that the United States grants to Latin American and Caribbean countries. The basic framework is the one developed that is extended to explain the relationship between foreign lobbying and tariff preferences. Results...

We extend the protection for sale framework by modelling non tariff barriers. Explicitly introducing partial rent capturing leads to a testable specification that bridges the gap between the theoretical Grossman and Helpman (1994) model and its empirical implementation, where coverage ratios...

This paper analyzes the interaction between the welfare state and immigration policy. We establish a negative relationship between the number of dependents and the extent of the welfare state due to the leakage of benefits. We also explain the determination of immigration policy as the outcome...

Structurally estimating the Grossman and Helpman (1994) model using coverage ratios that include non-tariff barriers leads to biased parameter estimates. We develop a "protection for sale" theoretical framework consistent with the data, by explicitly allowing for non-tariff barriers. Introducing...