Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Selling Protection for Sale

Contents:

Author Info

  • Wilfred J. Ethier

    () (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania)

Abstract

The Received Theory of trade policy, based solely on terms-of-trade externalities between national governments, has become the conventional wisdom among international trade theorists. But it displays two puzzles that render that theory inconsistent with reality. Significant empirical work, however, supports aspects of the Grossman-Helpman Protection-for-Sale model, a subset of the Received Theory. This paper shows that a simple formulation of the political economy of protection, that dispenses with terms-of-trade externalities, predicts the properties that the empirical work has confirmed, and is free of the counterfactual implications of the Received Theory. The implication is that, despite its claims to the contrary, the empirical literature offers no real support for the Protection-for-Sale model or, therefore, for the Received Theory.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://economics.sas.upenn.edu/system/files/working-papers/06-014.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania in its series PIER Working Paper Archive with number 06-014.

as in new window
Length: 19 pages
Date of creation: 08 May 2006
Date of revision: 01 Jun 2006
Handle: RePEc:pen:papers:06-014

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Phone: 215-898-9992
Fax: 215-573-2378
Email:
Web page: http://economics.sas.upenn.edu/pier
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: The Protection-for-Sale model; the Received Theory; the Terms-of-Trade Puzzle; the Export-Subsidy-Transfer Puzzle;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

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.:
as in new window
  1. Kishore Gawande & Usree Bandyopadhyay, 2000. "Is Protection for Sale? Evidence on the Grossman-Helpman Theory of Endogenous Protection," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(1), pages 139-152, February.
  2. Grossman, Gene & Helpman, Elhanan, 1993. "Trade Wars and Trade Talks," CEPR Discussion Papers 806, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  3. Grossman, G.M. & Helpman, E., 1992. "Protection for Sale," Papers 21-92, Tel Aviv.
  4. Imai, Susumu & Katayama, Hajime & Krishna, Kala, 2009. "Protection for sale or surge protection?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 675-688, August.
  5. Kyle Bagwell & Robert W. Staiger, 1997. "An Economic Theory of GATT," NBER Working Papers 6049, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Hillman, Arye L, 1982. "Declining Industries and Political-Support Protectionist Motives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(5), pages 1180-87, December.
  7. Wilfred J. Ethier, 2004. "Political Externalities, Nondiscrimination, and a Multilateral World," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(3), pages 303-320, 08.
  8. Hillman, Arye L, 1990. " Protectionist Policies as the Regulation of International Industry," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 67(2), pages 101-10, November.
  9. Giovanni Maggi & Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, 1999. "Protection for Sale: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1135-1155, December.
  10. Phillip McCalman, 2004. "Protection for Sale and Trade Liberalization: an Empirical Investigation," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(1), pages 81-94, 02.
  11. Arye L. Hillman & Ngo Van Long & Peter Moser, 1995. "Modelling Reciprocal Trade Liberalization: The Political-economy and National-welfare Perspectives," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 131(III), pages 503-515, September.
  12. Rodrik, Dani, 1995. "Political economy of trade policy," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 28, pages 1457-1494 Elsevier.
  13. Devashish Mitra & Dimitrios D. Thomakos & Mehmet A. Ulubaşoglu, 2002. ""Protection For Sale" In A Developing Country: Democracy Vs. Dictatorship," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(3), pages 497-508, August.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pen:papers:06-014

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dolly Guarini).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.