This paper rehabilitates the concept of effective rate of protection for use in political economy. The usual definition corresponds to no economically interesting magnitude in general equilibrium. The effective rate of protection for a sector is redefined here as the uniform tariff which is...

The standard theory of trade reform uses a passive government budget constraint, in which changes in tariff revenue are offset by changes in lump sum transfers. This paper offers a general framework for the analysis of trade reform when the government budget constraint is active, meaning that...

States with weak institutions (South) can lose from institutional response to trade with North. A Ricardian model of trade subject to predation characterizes the case. South labor earns equal returns in production and predation. Institutions are needed for security improvement because...

Intense US-China commercial rivalry is quantified in this paper with novel non-parametric relative resistance sufficient statistics. The accounting method minimizes the demand specification error variance in revealed resistances. China's manufacturing seller incidence falls (seller price rises)...

Non-parametric gravity as defined in this paper encompasses previous parametric forms. The model generates non-parametric sufficient statistics for arbitrage gains from trade and terms of trade, and a non-parametric elasticity of terms of trade with respect to supply. For world manufacturing...

Over the last decades, the United States has become increasingly integrated in the world economy. Very low trade barriers and comparatively liberal migration policies have made these developments possible. What drove US congressmen to support the recent wave of globalization? While much of the...