This paper shows that electoral incentives deter politicians from supporting trade liberalization. We focus on all major trade liberalization bills introduced since the early 1970s in the U.S. Congress, in which House and Senate members serve respectively two- and six-year terms and one third of...

While anecdotal evidence suggests that interest groups play a key role in shaping immigration policy, there is no systematic empirical analysis of this issue. In this paper, we construct an industry-level dataset for the United States, by combining information on the number of temporary work...

The number of preferential trade agreements has greatly increased over the past two decades, yet most existing arrangements take the form of free trade areas, and less than 10% can be considered to be fully fledged customs unions. This paper develops a political economy model of trade policy...