In democracies, trade policy is the result of interactions among many agents with different agendas. In accordance with this observation, we construct a dynamic model of legislative trade policy-making in the realm of distributive politics. An economy consists of different sectors, each of which...

We study the effect of globalization on the volatility of wages and worker welfare in a model in which risk is allocated through long-run employment relationships (the 'invisible handshake'). Globalization can take two forms: International integration of commodity markets (i.e., free trade) and...

With fast-track authority (FTA), the US Congress delegates trade-policy authority to the President by committing not to amend a trade agreement. We suggest an interpretation in which Congress uses FTA to forestall destructive competition between its members for protectionist rents. We show that...