The Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM) database measures variables that may be used to assess the readiness of countries for the knowledge economy and has many policy uses. Formal analysis using KAM data is faced with the problem of which variables to choose and why. Rather than make these...

There exist legal channels for informational lobbying of U.S. policymakers by foreign principals. Foreign governments and private sector principals frequently and intensively use this institutional channel to lobby on trade and tourism issues. The authors empirically study whether such lobbying...

The authors study whether political campaign contributions influence agricultural protection in the United States in the manner suggested by the political economy model of Grossman and Helpman (1994). This is the first attempt to test this model using agricultural data. The authors test the...

The author surveys the empirical literature on the political economy of agricultural protection. He uses a detailed data set of agricultural Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions over five U.S. congressional election cycles over the 1991-2000 period to investigate the relationship...