We analyze the effect of rising Chinese import competition between 1990 and 2007 on US local labor markets, exploiting cross- market variation in import exposure stemming from initial differences in industry specialization and instrumenting for US imports using changes in Chinese imports by...

We provide evidence that increased political influence, arising from CIA interventions during the Cold War, was used to create a larger foreign market for American products. Following CIA interventions, imports from the US increased dramatically, while total exports to the US were unaffected....

We develop a political economy model where loss aversion and reference dependence are important in shaping people’s preferences over trade policy. The policy implications of the augmented model differ in three ways: there is a region of compensating protection, where a decline in the world...