Forthcoming: Handbook of International Trade The Political Economy of Trade Policy: Empirical Approaches∗ Kishore Gawande University of New Mexico Pravin Krishna† Brown University ∗We are grateful to Rob Feenstra, James Harrigan, Randy Kroszner, Steve Levitt, Arvind Panagariya, Sam Peltzman, George Stergios and seminar participants at the NBER ITI Spring 2001 meetings for helpful suggestions and comments. †Corresponding Author. Contact Address: Economics Department, 64 Waterman Street, Brown Univer- sity, Providence, RI 02912. Email: Pravin
[email protected] − I. Introduction If, by an overwhelming consensus among economists, trade should be free, then why is it that nearly everywhere we look, and however far back, trade is in chains? Why do nearly all governments, unenlightened or enlightened, despotic or democratic, choose such apparently inefficient protectionist policies? In recent decades, an impressive theoretical and empirical literature on the “political economy of trade policy” has attempted to answer this question. The primary explanation offered in this literature is that sub-optimal policies are chosen because policies aren’t set by those who seek to maximize economic efficiency.1 Rather, they are set in political contexts where the objectives of the policy-makers are different from that of aggregate welfare maximization. This study of “endogenous” trade policy determination, which takes into explicit account the political circumstances under which policy is set, forms the core of the literature on the political economy of trade policy whose empirical ambitions and accomplishments to date this paper attempts to survey.2 The main objective of this chapter, then, is to summarize and evaluate analytically the ev- idence in favor of endogenous protection.