The objective of this paper is to examine the effects of political asymmetries on a FTA and a CU. I have shown that either a higher lobbying sensitivity to the foreign firm or a more susceptibility of politicians to lobbying are sufficient to lead to a higher tariff protection at the individual...

This paper compares various specifications of the gravity model of trade as nested versions of a general specification that uses bilateral country-pair fixed effects to control for heterogeneity. For each specification, we show that the atheoretical restrictions used to obtain them from the...

The paper explores the effect of protection lobbying by solving a firm's dynamic optimization problem where there is uncertainty about future demand, the success of lobbying and non-zero entry/exit costs. It is found that firms in declining industries tend to lobby to prevent shutting down...

This paper compares various specifications of the gravity model of trade as nested versions of a general specification that uses bilateral country-pair fixed effects to control for heterogeneity. For each specification, we show that the a theoretical restrictions to obtain them from the general...