We investigate how protectionist policies influence short-run economic growth. Our empirical strategy exploits an extraordinary tax scandal that gave rise to an unexpected change of government in Sweden. A free-trade majority in parliament was overturned by a protectionist majority in 1887. The...

This paper presents a positive model which shows that institutional setups on capital and labor markets might be intertwined by politicoeconomic forces. Some countries especially in continental Europe exhibit a corporatist politicoeconomic equilibrium with a sustantial protection of insiders on...