In democracies, trade policy is the result of interactions among many agents with different agendas. In accordance with this observation, we construct a dynamic model of legislative trade policy-making in the realm of distributive politics. An economy consists of different sectors, each of which...

With fast-track authority (FTA), the US Congress delegates trade-policy authority to the President by committing not to amend a trade agreement. We suggest an interpretation in which Congress uses FTA to forestall destructive competition between its members for protectionist rents. We show that...

In democracies, trade policy is the result of interactions among many agents with different agendas. In accordance with this observation, we construct a dynamic model of legislative trade policy-making in the realm of distributive politics. An economy consists of different sectors, each of which...

With fast-track authority (FTA), the US Congress delegates trade-policy authority to the President by committing not to amend a trade agreement. We suggest an interpretation in which Congress uses FTA to forestall destructive competition between its members for protectionist rents. We show that...

We describe firm pricing when consumers search passively and follow simple reservation price rules. In stark contrast to other models in the literature, this approach yields equilibrium price dispersion in pure strategies even when firms have the same marginal costs. In equilibrium, lower price...

We revisit the fundamental issue of market provision of variety associated with Chamberlin, Spence, and Dixit-Stiglitz when firms sell multiple products. Both products and firms are (horizontally) differentiated. We propose a general nested demand framework where consumers first decide upon a...