A Protectionist Bias in Majoritarian Politics
Gene Grossman and
Elhanan Helpman
Papers from Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy
Abstract:
We develop a novel model of campaigns, elections, and policymaking in which the ex ante objectives of national party leaders differ from the ex post objectives of elected legislators. This generates a distinction between "policy rhetoric" and "policy reality" and introduces an important role for "party discipline" in the policymaking process. We identify a protectionist bias in majoritarian politics. When trade policy is chosen by the majority delegation and legislators in the minority have limited means to influence choices, the parties announce trade policies that favor specific factors, and the expected tariff or export subsidy is positive. Positions and expected outcomes monotonically approach free trade as party discipline strengthens.
JEL-codes: D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11014.pdf
Related works:
Journal Article: A Protectionist Bias in Majoritarian Politics (2005) 
Working Paper: A Protectionist Bias in Majoritarian Politics (2005) 
Working Paper: A Protectionist Bias in Majoritarian Politics (2004) 
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:ecl:prirpe:12-21-2004
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Papers from Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().