This is the first empirical study to examine Congressional support of an antidumping law that directs the U.S. Customs Service to distribute collected duties to protected firms. The law produces a highly transparent measure of how much each firm is rewarded for its rent-seeking efforts to secure...

Theoretical comparisons of the welfare consequences of tariffs, subsidies and import licenses have relied on the assumption that firms reap no private benefits from the imposition of a tariff. This paper conducts an empirical analysis of whether a recent change in U.S. antidumping law known as...