During the past half century, multilateral trade liberalization has reduced tariffs to historically low levels. The Received Theory of multilateral trade agreements, based solely on terms-of-trade externalities between national governments, offers an explanation that has become the conventional wisdom among international trade theorists. But this explanation displays two puzzles that render it inconsistent with actual trade policy and actual trade agreements. This paper introduces inter-governmental political externalities into a model with terms-of-trade externalities. It delivers results consistent with what we actually observe, and thus resolves the puzzles, if and only if political externalities dominate terms-of-trade externalities.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania in its series PIER Working Paper Archive with number
03-035.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F02 - International Economics - - General - - - International Economic Order; Noneconomic International Organizations;; Economic Integration and Globalization: General F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Grossman, Gene M & Helpman, Elhanan, 1994.
"Protection for Sale,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 833-50, September.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1992.
"Protection For Sale,"
NBER Working Papers
4149, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Kyle Bagwell & Robert W. Staiger, 1999.
"An Economic Theory of GATT,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 215-248, March.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions: