Protection for sale without aggregation bias

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Solleder, Jean-Marc; Silvy, Fulvio; Olarreaga, Marcelo
• 署名单位: University of Geneva
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2026.104222
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: trade-policy; COMPETITION

摘要

Estimates of Grossman and Helpman (1994) Protection For Sale (PFS) model yield unrealistically high estimates of the weight governments put on social welfare relative to lobbying contributions. Estimates of the former are often close to 1. We argue this is due to the level of aggregation at which the model is estimated. While protection is determined at the tariff line level, production data are only available at the industry level. Using a new production dataset at the tariff level, our estimates show that the average weight on social welfare in a sample of 142 countries declines by 77 percent.