A Quantile-based Test of Protection for Sale Model When Political Organization is Unknown

We propose and conduct a simple test of the protection for sale model that does not require information on political organization. Our approach exploits the following prediction of the PFS model: given the inverse import penetration ratio and other control variables, industries with higher protection are more likely to be politically organized, and thus for those industries, we should expect a positive relationship between the inverse import penetration ratio and the protection measure. The quantile regression and quantile IV results are, if anything, the opposite of the above