In this historical analysis of U.S. trade policy, we apply the median voter model to explain legislative decision-making. In this model, the level of tariff protection is expected to change with changes in the median legislator. We show that this simple model does a remarkable job of explaining...

We obtain time series estimates of the long run growth rates of 17 OECD countries, and test the hypothesis that these are the same across countries. We find that we cannot reject this hypothesis for the first and last three decades of the 20th century. We conclude that: (i) there are few, if...

In this paper we clarify the impact that barriers to capital accumulation can have on a two-sector neoclassical growth model's ability to explain the observed differences in incomes across countries. We show that the effect of barriers to technology adoption in a two sector model is necessarily...

We examine the importance of delegation for Congressional policy-making, focusing particularly on U.S. trade policy. We present a model of decision-making where legislators use trade policy to maximize their districts' welfare. We show that this simple model does a remarkable job explaining...