For the steel import quota bill of 1999, each word in the Congressional Record costs $39 in campaign contributions from the steel industry. Consequently, our answer is "Yes, talk is cheap!"

Recently, Jans, Wall and Hariharan demonstrated that "there may exist an incentive for a welfare-maximizing government that normally prefers free trade to maintain a protectionist reputation by imposing a voluntary export restraint, VER." We show in the context of their model, which postulates a...