The Value of Trade Agreements in the Presence of Political Pressures

Giovanni Maggi and Andres Rodriguez-Clare

Working Papers from Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Public and International Affairs

Abstract: An argument often heard in favor of trade agreements is that they provide a way for a government to credibly distance itself from the domestic special interest groups who lobby for protection; the idea is that, by committing to free trade, a government may be able to foreclse political pressures at home. In this paper we develop a dynamic, small-country model in which factors are sector-specific in the short run but mobile across sectors in the long run, and show that the rents derived from the political process may not compensate the government for the welfare distortions caused by protection.

Keywords: TRADE AGREEMENTS; LOBBYING (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:fth:priwpu:180

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Public and International Affairs PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, PRINCETON NEW- JERSEY 08542 U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().