Lobbying competition over us trade policy
By: Kishore Gawande, Pravin Krishna.
Contributors: Krishna, Pravin.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series ;; working paper 11371; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) ;; working paper no. 11371.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Lobbying -- United States.; United States -- Commerce.
Description: "Competition between opposing lobbies is an important factor in the endogenous determination of trade policy.  This paper investigates empirically the consequences of lobbying competition between upstream and downstream producers for US trade policy.  The theoretical framework used is the well-known Grossman-Helpman model of trade policy determination suitably modified to account for the cross-sectoral use of inputs in production (the input-output matrix).  Our empirical results, using US trade data, validate the predictions of the theoretical model with lobbying competition.  Trade protection is found to be higher in industries with organized lobbies but lower when there are organized downstream users of the industry's output.  Lobbying competition is additionally interesting as a candidate explanation for an empirical puzzle in the literature concerning the apparently nearly "welfare-maximizing" behavior of the US government in setting trade policy.  Our estimates diminish the magnitude of the puzzle somewhat, but do not provide a full quantitative resolution of this question"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
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