TY  - JOUR
AU  - Grossman,Gene M.
AU  - Helpman,Elhanan
TI  - Trade Wars and Trade Talks
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 4280
PY  - 1993
Y2  - February 1993
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4280
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4280.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Gene M. Grossman
International Economics Section
Department of Economics
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609/258-4823
Fax: 609/258-1374
E-Mail: grossman@princeton.edu

Elhanan Helpman
Department of Economics
Harvard University
1875 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617-495-4690
Fax: 617-495-7730
E-Mail: ehelpman@harvard.edu
AB  - Whether governments clash in trade disputes or negotiate over trade agreements, their actions in the international arena reflect political conditions back home. Previous studies of cooperative and noncooperative trade relations have focused on governments that are immune from political pressures and that act as benevolent servants of the public interest. Here we take a first step toward introducing domestic politics into the analysis of international economic relations. We study the interactions between national leaders who are concerned both with providing a high standard of living to the general electorate and collecting campaign contributions from special interest groups. The analysis reveals the determinants of the structure of protection in a noncooperative trade war and in a cooperative trade agreement.
ER  -