Does 'Protection for Sale' Apply to the US Food Industries?

doi:10.1111/j.1477-9552.2007.00143.x

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Wiley InterScience

Journal of Agricultural Economics

Volume 59 Issue 1, Pages 25 - 40

Published Online: 8 Jan 2008

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Does 'Protection for Sale' Apply to the US Food Industries?

Rigoberto A. Lopez ¹

Correspondence to JEL classifications: F13, F1, L66, C12.

¹ Rigoberto A. Lopez is a Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06268, USA. E-mail: rigoberto.lopez@uconn.edu for correspondence. Funding from the Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station and from the Food Marketing Policy Center is gratefully acknowledged. Comments by Emilio Pagoulatos, Ian Sheldon and two anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged. The content of the paper, however, is the sole responsibility of the author.

KEYWORDS

Food manufacturing • lobbying • political economy • tariffs • trade protection

ABSTRACT

This paper tests the Protection for Sale model in terms of the structure of protection and how realistic the estimated domestic welfare weight is relative to campaign contributions. Using data from US food manufacturing, empirical results support the key predictions for the structure of protection when either all food manufacturing industries or most of the general population is assumed to be politically organised. The domestic welfare weight is estimated as low as 0.837, the lowest econometric estimate to date, underlining that protection is for sale and that, with a qualified 'yes', the model fits the data for these industries.

(Original submitted January 2005, revision received July 2006, accepted June 2007.)

DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER (DOI)

10.1111/j.1477-9552.2007.00143.x About DOI