Xiaobo Lu
Department of Political Science
Yale University
New Haven, CT 06520-8301
E-Mail: 
NBER Working Papers and Publications
| January 2010 | Envy, Altruism, and the International Distribution of Trade Protection
with Kenneth F. Scheve, Matthew J. Slaughter: w15700
One important puzzle in international political economy is why lower-earning and less-skilled intensive industries tend to receive relatively high levels of trade protection. This pattern of protection holds even in low-income countries in which less-skilled labor is likely to be the relatively abundant factor of production and therefore would be expected in many standard political-economy frameworks to receive relatively low, not high, levels of protection. We propose and model one possible explanation: that individual aversion to inequality--both envy and altruism--lead to systematic differences in support for trade protection across industries, with sectors employing lower-earning workers more intensively being relatively preferred recipients for trade protection. We conduct original... Published: “Envy, Altruism, and the International Distribution of Trade Protection,” with Xiaobo Lu and Kenneth F. Scheve, American Journal of Political Science, 56(3), 2012.
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