Taxation and the political economy of the tariff

John Mark Hansen

International Organization, 1990, vol. 44, issue 4, 527-551

Abstract: Traditional accounts of U.S. tariff policy emphasize trade strategies and interest group politics. This article makes a departure. It opens with an observation: up until World War I, the tariff was the largest single source of federal government revenues. It then explores the significance of tariffs as taxes, theoretically and empirically.In its first part, the article develops a theory of taxation politics and applies it to the tariff. In its second part, it submits the theory to an empirical test, modeling changes in U.S. tariff rates from 1829 to 1940. The politics of tariff revision, it argues, followed from two characteristics of the tariff as tax: from the extent of the treasury's dependence upon it and from the distributive pattern of its burdens and benefits. Taken together, the article concludes, revenue dependence and distributive incidence account for several diverse aspects of American tariff policy, including the structure of its coalitions, the shifts in its objectives, and the timing of its innovations.

Date: 1990
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:intorg:v:44:y:1990:i:04:p:527-551_03

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Organization from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().