Commercial Policy with Altruistic Voters

Julio Rotemberg

Journal of Political Economy, 2003, vol. 111, issue 1, 174-201

Abstract: In public discussions of policy, evidence that import-competing sectors earn low or falling incomes is often used to argue for protection. This paper rationalizes the apparent effectiveness of this argument in both direct and indirect democracies. In direct democracies, a small degree of voter altruism leads to protection in the specific factors model when the import-competing sector earns little. Similarly, voter altruism creates an incentive in representative democracies for self-interested parties to present evidence to legislators on the income of import-competing factors. This leads to a theory in which campaign contributions buy access to legislators rather than buy votes.

Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/344804 main text (application/pdf)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: Commercial Policy with Altruistic Voters (2000)
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:ucp:jpolec:v:111:y:2003:i:1:p:174-201

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().