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What Governments Maximize and Why: The View from Trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2009

Kishore Gawande ,
Pravin Krishna  and
Marcelo Olarreaga
Kishore Gawande
Affiliation:
Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A & M University. E-mail: kgawande@tamu.edu
Pravin Krishna
Affiliation:
School of Advanced International Studies & Department of Economics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. E-mail: Pravin_Krishna@jhu.edu
Marcelo Olarreaga
Affiliation:
Département d'Economie Politique, Université de Genève, Switzerland. E-mail: Marcelo.Olarreaga@ecopo.unige.ch
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Abstract

Policymaking 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 article investigates quantitatively the welfare-mindedness of governments and attempts to understand these political and institutional determinants of the differences in government behavior across countries.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 491 - 532
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2009

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