The proper way to measure differences in trade protection across countries and economic sectors has been a vexing problem for economists studying international trade. Based on research by Anderson and Neary (2005) and Kee <italic>et al</italic>. (KNO) (2009), this article proposes the use of Trade Restriction...

We study how trade protection varies with the electoral rules for legislative representation. In particular, we investigate different hypotheses about why trade policy differs between countries with legislatures elected by a plurality election rule in single member constituencies and...

Using Monte Carlo simulations, this paper evaluates the bias properties of common estimators used in growth regressions derived from the Solow model. We explicitly allow for measurement error in the right-hand side variables, as well as country-specific effects that are correlated with the...

Using data on authorizations from the 2005 Highway Bill, we show that the legislative allocation of pork barrel spending by U.S. state (measured by the value of transportation earmarks per capita) greatly favors smaller states. We exploit the difference between two versions of the bill: the...