The Deep Roots of Trade Policy
If a country’s trade policies, including the formation of preferential trade agreements, invariably generate winners and losers within a national economy, what factors determine whether a policy or an international trade agreement will have sufficient domestic political support to survive? And, likewise, what determines the specific content and structure of said policy or treaty? Traditional theories of trade policy formation have either focused on the relative political power of sectoral interests or of the owners of the factors of production (land, labor and capital) aggregated at the national level. But could where different economic interests are located matter? Do formal and informal political institutions, which distribute political power across political jurisdictions, create and implement trade policies that favor relatively important subnational interests over broader interests?
Drawing on quantitative and qualitative evidence, this project demonstrates how and why subnational interests influenced the commercial policies of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico as well as the commercial structure of the Southern Cone Common Market. Although economic in nature, the formation of trade policy is a political process that favors some interests at the expense of others and, therefore, generates supporters and opponents. Trade policy outcomes emerge from a redistributive conflict between interested groups fought through the political system. Since the bureaucrats, legislatures, and presidents that design, authorize, and implement trade policy are, in one way or another, beholden to societal interests, their policy preferences depend on constituent interests. Which interests are favored depends on the institutional context of the decision making process and the manner in which private interests influence policymaker’s preferences.When domestic political institutions empower economic interests within political jurisdictions and/or subnational political leaders with the ability to influence national policymaking, policy outcomes privilege regionally important interests regardless of their relative importance at the national level. Hence, in order to understand why states’ commercial policies favor some industries and not others, we must understand how countries’ economic and political geography interact to determine the structure of trade policies.
Associated Papers
Cross-national Pharmaceutical Regulation (with Cassandra Sweet)
The last two decades have been characterized by deep changes for the pharmaceutical sector, including the complete transformation of intellectual property systems at the behest of the World Trade Organization and the consolidation of global active ingredient suppliers in China and India. Although the rules for ownership of medicine have been set and globally implemented, we know surprisingly little about how the standards for market entrance and regulation of pharmaceutical products have changed at the national level. How standardized are national pharmaceutical market systems? Do we find homogeneity or variation across the developing world? Are their patterns for understanding why some countries have moved closer to one global norm for pharmaceutical regulation and others have developed hybrid models for oversight of this sector? To answer these question, we have developed three-dimensional index of pharmaceutical regulation for 75 developing countries using the World Health Organizations Country Pharmaceutical Situation 2011 survey. This paper gauges the levels of standards in public and private generics markets for developing countries to offer three indicators of market oversight: State Regulatory Infrastructure, Monitoring the Private Market and Public Quality Control. Identifying the different variables that affect a state’s institutional capacity and current standard level offers new insights to the state of pharmaceuticals in the developing world.
Associated Papers
“Global Pharmaceutical Regulation and the Challenge of Integration for Developing States”
“Intellectual Property Rights and Pharmaceutical Regulation: Policy diffusion in the developing world”
Code Orange or Code Red? Do you vote for whether it is healthy to breathe? Clean Competition (with Amanda Fidalgo and Xun Cao)
What induces politicians to provide clean air to their constituents? Increasing urban and rural air pollution in developing countries places the health and welfare of millions of the world’s most vulnerable citizens at risk. So how do we get politicians to provide clean air? Electoral competition and government responsiveness is hardly a new topic for students of politics. There is often thought to be a positive link between electoral competition and the provision of public goods. Most studies use the level of social spending and infrastructure projects as measures of public goods. However, the ability to target social programs andinfrastructure projects to specific constituencies can reduce their “public” nature. Environmental public goods, such as air quality, on the other hand, are some of the purest type of public goods. They are both non-excludable and non-rivalrous.Moreover, the disperse nature of clean air as well as the trade-off, often faced by local politicians, between providing environmental public goods and protecting the vibrancy of the local economy makes the provision of clean air a more difficult public good to target and to politicize for electoral benefit. Using satellite data we analyze the relationship between subnational political competition and air quality.
Associated Papers
“Clean Competition: How Competitive Elections Clean-up the Air in Mexican Municipalities”
Other Working Papers
“Gravity and FDI What is the role of gravity and institutional friction?”
“Beyond ceteris paribus: The observed-value approach observational studies and linear models”
“Burning Ballots for Democracy: Electoral Violence, Political Competition, and Mineral Royalties in Peruvian Municipal Elections” with Gerson Julcarima Álvarez