Electoral systems and protectionism: an industrylevel analysis

Our paper advances the previous literature on the relationship between electoral systems and trade protection in several ways. First, our paper is the first to incorporate disaggregated, productlevel data in a crosscountry study. We find that prior crosscountry results, based on national average tariffs, mask a great deal of underlying industrylevel variation. Second, we introduce an innovative proxy for geographic concentration of ownership that varies both by industry and by country. We find that geographic concentration helps to explain the industry heterogeneity. Greater geographic concentration is linked to higher average tariffs, a finding consistent with the theoretical model.