An example of special interest protection is provided by this study's general equilibrium theory that explains income distribution with goods markets, factor markets, lobbies, political parties and voters all pursuing their self interests.
First published in 1997, this volume builds an economic model in which a model of the policy-formation process was grafted onto an economic model of the traditional kind. Politics are not made in a vacuum; they have their basis in the politico-economic system which economists have been modelling and analysing for a very long time. For economists, government policies are particularly important as they determine the environment within which all agents make their choices and the way in which the market allocates resources. Through an examination of tariffs and an equilibrium model of the economic sphere of a small open political economy, Hom Moorti Pant aims to explore some of the reasons and effects of government policy decisions on the economy.
The Political Economy of Trade Policy: Theory, Evidence and Applications is a collection of sole-authored and co-authored papers by Devashish Mitra that have been published in various scholarly journals over the last two decades. It covers diverse topics in the political economy of trade policy, ranging from the role of modeling lobby formation in the context of trade policy determination to its applications to the question of unilateralism versus reciprocity and trade agreements. It also includes the theory and the empirics of the choice of policy instruments. Finally, the book presents the empirical investigation of the Grossman-Helpman “Protection for Sale” model as well as the Mayer “Median-Voter” model of trade policy determination.
In the present text the author deals with both conventional and new approaches to trade theory and policy, treating all important research topics in international economics and clarifying their mathematical intricacies. The textbook is intended for undergraduates, graduates and researchers alike. It addresses undergraduate students with extremely clear language and illustrations, making even the most complex trade models accessible. In the appendices, graduate students and researchers will find self-contained treatments in mathematical terms. The new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to reflect the latest research on international trade.
The editors would like to thank the Donner Foundation, the Draeger Foundation, and the Government of Canada for their timely and generous support of this study. The study was initiated by the editors as part of the research program of the Center of Canadian Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C., and the emerging affiliated program in North American Studies. Particular appreciation goes to Dr. Barbara G. Doran for the final editing of the entire manuscript. In addition to the individuals acknowledged in each of the chapters, the editors thank those scholars who helped guide the project at various times with constructive criticism and discussion: Tom Barnes, Robert Bothwell, Reuven Brenner, David Calleo, Colin Campbell, Benjamin Ginsberg, Judith Goldstein, Peter Katzenstein, Allan Kornberg, Jonathan Lemco, Seymour Martin Lipset, Charles Lipson, Charles Pearson, Richard Rosecrance, and Sidney Weintraub.
This collected volume studies the role of organized interests in collective decision-making and the emergence of self-regulation. In democratic settings, organized interests play a role at the legislative stage, affecting the outcome through lobbying activity. While pressure groups andlobbying are a traditional topic in public choice theory, the incentives to maintain private rules and enforcement through self-regulation is a less developed research area in political economy. The book provides a balanced mix of theoretical and empirical papers in traditional public choice,addressing the issues of how organized interest affect legislation and self-regulation, investigating the incentives and the problems related to the private enforcement of law.
This collection of papers by former students and colleagues celebrates the profound impact that Jagdish Bhagwati has had on the field of international economics over the past three decades. Bhagwati, who is the Arthur Lehman Professor of Economics at Columbia University, has made pathbreaking contributions to the theory of international trade and commercial policy, including immiserizing growth, domestic distortions, economic development, and political economy. His success and influence as a teacher and mentor is widely recognized among students at both MIT and Columbia, and as founder of the Journal of International Economics, he has encouraged research on many questions of theoretical and policy relevance. The political economy of trade policy, Bhagwati's most recent area of interest, is the theme of this collection which addresses salient topics including market distortions, income distribution, and the political process of policy-making. Sections and Contributors Market Distortions, T. N. Srinivasan. Paul A. Samuelson. Paul R. Krugman * Trade and Income Distribution, Douglas A. Irwin. Richard A. Brecher and Ehsan U. Choudri. Robert C. Feenstra and Gordon H. Hanson. Earl L. Grinols * Perspectives on Political Economy, Robert E. Baldwin. Peter Diamond * Models of Political Economy and Trade, Gene M. Grossman and Elhana Helpman. John Douglas Wilson. B. Peter Rosendorff. Arvind Panagariya and Ronald Findlay
"Freund and Özden provide new survey evidence showing that loss aversion and reference dependence are important in shaping people's perception of trade policy. Under the assumption that agents' welfare functions exhibit these behavioral elements, they analyze a model with a welfare-maximizing government and with the lobbying framework of Grossman and Helpman (1994). The policy implications of the augmented models differ in three important ways: There is a region of compensating protection, where a decline in the world price leads to an offsetting increase in protection, such that a constant domestic price is maintained; Protection following a single negative price shock will be persistent; Irrespective of the extent of lobbying, there will be a deviation from free trade that tends to favor loss-making industries. The augmented models are more consistent with the observed structure of protection and, in particular explain why many trade policy instruments are explicitly designed to maintain prices at a given level. This paper-- a product of the Trade Team, Development Research Group-- is part of a larger effort in the group to analyze trade policy formulation"-- World Bank web site.
Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman are widely acclaimed for their pioneering theoretical studies of how special interest groups seek to influence the policymaking process in democratic societies. This collection of eight of their previously published articles is a companion to their recent monograph, Special Interest Politics. It clarifies the origins of some of the key ideas in their monograph and shows how their methods can be used to illuminate policymaking in a critical area. Following an original introduction to the contents of the book and its relationship to Special Interest Politics, the first three chapters focus on campaign contributions and candidate endorsements--two of the tools that interest groups use in their efforts to influence policy outcomes. The remaining chapters present applications to trade policy issues. Grossman and Helpman demonstrate how the approaches developed in their monograph can shed light on tariff formation in small and large countries, on the conduct of multilateral trade negotiations, and on the viability of bilateral free trade agreements. They also examine the forms that regional and multilateral trade agreements are likely to take and the ways in which firms invest abroad to circumvent trade barriers induced by political pressures. The articles collected in this volume are required reading for anyone interested in international relations, trade policy, or political economy. They show why Grossman and Helpman are global leaders in the fields of international economics and political economy.