A standard finding in the political economy of trade policy literature is that we should expect export-oriented industries to attract more assistance than import-competing industries. In reality, however, trade policy is heavily biased toward supporting import industries. This paper shows how the costliness of raising revenue via taxation makes trade subsidies less desirable and trade taxes more desirable in a standard protection for sale framework. The model is then estimated and its predictions tested using U.S. tariff data. An empirical estimate of the costliness of revenue-raising is also obtained.
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Paper provided by University of Connecticut, Department of Economics in its series Working papers with number
2005-28.
Length: 26 pages Date of creation: Jun 2005 Date of revision:
Apr 2007 Handle: RePEc:uct:uconnp:2005-28
Note: I thank the co-editor Kala Krishna and two anonymous referees for comments that greatly improved this paper. Thanks also go to Kishore Gawande and Daniel Trefler for providing data and to Emily Blanchard, Dhammika Dharmapala, Josh Ederington, Kishore Gawande, Susumu Imai, Mary Lovely, Giovanni Maggi, Devashish Mitra, Paul Pecorino, Bob Staiger, Gautam Tripathi, and Christian Zimmermann for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. The hospitality of Hans-Werner Sinn and the CES-ifo Institute at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, where part of this research was conducted, is gratefully acknowledged. Contact details of provider: Postal: University of Connecticut 341 Mansfield Road, Unit 1063 Storrs, CT 06269-1063 Phone: (860) 486-4889 Fax: (860) 486-4463 Web page: http://www.econ.uconn.edu/ More information through EDIRC
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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.
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