Protection for Sale Made Easy

Richard Baldwin and Frédéric Robert-Nicoud

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: Formal analysis of the political economy of trade policy was substantially redirected by theappearance of Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman's 1994 paper, "Protection for Sale".Before that article a fairly wide range of approaches were favoured by various authors onvarious issues, but afterwards, the vast majority of theoretical tracts on endogenous tradepolicy have used the Protection for Sale framework (PFS for short) as their main vehicle. Thereason, of course, is that the framework is both respectable - because its microfoundationsare distinctly firmer than were those of the earlier lobbying approaches - and it is very easyto work with. Despite the popularity of the PFS framework, it appears that no one haspresented a simple diagram that illustrates how the PFS frameworks and explains why it is soeasy. This short note aims to remedy that ommission.

Keywords: protection for sale; endogenous protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H32 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
Date: 2007-06
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Working Paper: Protection for Sale Made Easy (2006)
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