Trade Policy: 'Political' vs. 'Economic' Factors

Political Factors in Monetary Policy

Almost all observers agree that in some sense political factors matter in the conduct of monetary policy. There is much less agreement as to which political factors are most important, or as to exactly how those factors influence monetary policy. In this essay, I will advance a rudimentary typology of political factors that have been of interest to students of the conduct of economic policy. I ...

Trade Policy, Economic Interests, and Party Politics in a Developing Country: The Political Economy of CAFTADR

Developing countries have increasingly opened their economies to trade. Research about trade policy in developed countries focuses on a bottom-up process by identifying economic preferences of domestic groups. We know less about developing countries. We analyze how economic and political variables influenced Costa Rican voters in a referendum on CAFTA-DR, an international trade agreement. We fi...

Trade Policy, Economic Interests and Party Politics in a Developing Country: The Political Economy of CAFTA

Developing countries have increasingly opened their economies to trade. Research about trade policy in developed countries focuses on a bottom-up process by identifying economic preferences of domestic groups. We know less about developing countries. We analyze how economic and political variables influenced Costa Rican voters in a referendum on CAFTA, an international trade agreement. We find ...

A political-economic analysis of free-trade agreements: Comment

By Xuepeng Liu Abstract: In his paper in the American Economic Review, Levy (1997) develops a political economy model of free-trade agreements (FTAs). He emphasizes that the homotheticity restriction of the production function assumed for the differentiated product is crucial for his model. This comment shows that this homotheticity assumption is unnecessary and actually problematic. It is prob...

The Political Economy of Trade Policy: A Short Survey