Endogenous political organization and the value of trade agreements

Devashish Mitra ()

Chapter 2 in The Political Economy of Trade Policy:Theory, Evidence and Applications, 2016, pp 23-35 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: In a bargaining model of endogenous protection, I introduce fixed costs of political-organization that need to be incurred by capitalists prior to actual lobbying. Unlike Maggi and Rodriguez-Clare [J. Pol. Econ. 106(3) (1998) 575] intersectoral capital mobility is disallowed. Nevertheless, I am still able to obtain their main result that a government with low bargaining power vis-à-vis the import-competing lobby precommits to a free-trade agreement. Further, with high fixed organizational costs, the government prefers to stay out of such agreements. Its maximum bargaining power consistent with signing a trade agreement has an inverse-V-shaped relationship with respect to the size of fixed costs.

Keywords: Political Economy; Protection; Trade Policy; Tariffs; Subsidies; Reciprocal Trade Liberalization; Unilateral Trade Liberalization; Unilateralism; Reciprocity; Lobbying; Median Voter Models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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