What Governments Maximize and Why: The View from Trade

Kishore Gawande, Pravin Krishna and Marcelo Olarreaga

No 14953, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Policy making power enables governments to redistribute income to powerful interests in society. However, some governments exhibit greater concern for aggregate welfare than others. This government behavior may itself be endogenously determined by a number of economic, political and institutional factors. Trade policy, being fundamentally redistributive, provides a valuable context in which the welfare mindedness of governments may be empirically evaluated. This paper investigates quantitatively the welfare mindedness of governments and attempts to understand these political and institutional determinants of the differences in government behavior across countries.

JEL-codes: D72 F1 F13 F5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
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Published as Gawande, Kishore & Krishna, Pravin & Olarreaga, Marcelo, 2009. "What Governments Maximize and Why: The View from Trade," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 63(03), pages 491-532, July.

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