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Some recent empirical studies, motivated by Grossman and Helpman's (1994) "protection-for-sale" model, suggest that very few factors (none of them labor related) determine trade protection. This paper reexamines the roles that labor issues play in the determination of trade policy. We introduce collective bargaining, differences in inter industry labor mobility, and trade union lobbying into the protection-for-sale model, and show that the equilibrium protection rate in our model depends upon these labor market variables. We test our model predictions using data from U.S. manufacturing and find that labor market considerations do seem to matter for U.S. trade policy.

Smallholder agricultural production depends heavily on environmental production conditions that are largely exogenously determined. Using panel data from 464 traditional rice plots in Côte d'Ivoire, the authors show that controlling for heterogeneous environmental production conditions significantly changes inferences, perhaps especially with respect to smallholder rice farmers' estimated technical inefficiency. (InWent/DÜI)