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We examine the political economy underpinnings of import protection in general equilibrium. Starting from a dual theoretical representation of production, trade, and consumption, we map a general representation of the real economy to underlying political processes aka the political support function to derive a general representation of the determinants of import protection. This includes the relatively standard approach of examining the pattern of tariffs in a Grossman-Helpman framework, as well as recent extensions linked to upstream and downstream linkages between sectors. Because we start from a relatively generic general equilibrium model of production, we have an immediate bridge between the theory and general equilibrium-based estimates of the welfare effects and rents generated by tariffs. We therefore follow the development of our generalized theoretical framework by introducing the use of general equilibrium estimates of the direct and indirect marginal impacts of protection at the sector level for econometric estimation of the revealed pattern of policy weights. This GE approach yields direct estimates of political weights based on economic effects, including cross-industry effects. The resulting weights lend insight into relative protection of agriculture and manufacturing. Working with data on the European union, we find that the strength of downstream linkages matters for policy weights and rates of protection, as does the national posture of industry. We also find support for a general political support function in the determination of tariffs, though results are mixed for the more narrow Grossman-Helpman specification. In the EU, nationality of industry seems to play a role in the setting of Community-wide import protection.

In the final decades of the 19th century Nagyvárad became a progressive, dominant town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire's Kingdom of Hungary. The town's prosperity overlapped with the emergence of the Hungarian civil institutional system, the founding of modern parliamentarism. The question is whether the town played a role in the new Hungarian House of Representatives in proportion to its weight or not. To what extent did Nagyvárad have the opportunity to be represented in accordance with its interests? The study reviews the role of Nagyvárad in the House of Representatives from two perspectives. The first is that the city is represented by only one person in the House of Representatives consisting of 413 (later 415) members. We examine to what extent Nagyvárad stands out from the other towns with a single mandate (Arad, Temesvár, Hódmezővásárhely, Kassa, Pécs, Győr, etc.) and to what extent it would fit with towns with several mandates (Debrecen, Kolozsvár, Miskolc, Marosvásárhely, Brassó, Nagyszeben, etc.). In the second half of the study, we examine the individual weight, party affiliation, and quality of individuals representing the town. We find an answer to the question of whether Nagyvárad belonged to the ranks of pro-government or rather opposition towns. Finally, we present a short biography of the politicians.

In this paper, we examine trade policy determinants and trade reform in a developing country setting using a political economy model. The government determines tariffs by balancing the political support from producers vs. consumers, while placing a higher political weight on producers' welfare relative to average citizens. We then expand the model in several directions to guide our subsequent estimations at the three‐digit industry level for Colombia between 1983 and 1998. We account for import substitution motives for protection but describe how the government's move away from these policies leads to unilateral trade liberalization. We innovatively allow the political weights to vary based on key industry variables beyond a common denominator. The sectors with higher employment, labor cost, and preferential trade agreement (PTA) import shares receive a larger political weight compared to otherwise similar sectors. The novelty of our approach is estimating the effect of sectoral characteristics on protection filtered through the political weights. We obtain more realistic estimates for these weights and provide some evidence for a slowing down effect of PTAs on trade liberalization.

Purpose: In professional practice, body weight issues are typically considered from an individual-level standpoint. In contrast to this dominant perspective, we highlight that body weight has prominent social, economic, and political influences and connotations. An examination of the social complexity of weight provides opportunity to shift focus from individual to societal and structural influences on perceptions of weight. Methods: Seven renowned experts in weight-related issues with at least 10-years-experience in various fields from across Europe, Australia, the United States, and Canada participated in interviews about their professional experience with weight. Interviews were analyzed using hermeneutic methods via an iterative interpretive process. Results: The interviews revealed a battlefield, a war waged on weight. War emerged as an overall metaphor that included aspects of: war on obesity, bodies as battlefields, war camps, war fronts, entrenchment and negotiation and, finally, the phenomenon of "no man's land." Conclusions: In many ways, language itself limits us from capturing the complexities of weight. The war metaphor provides a way of understanding the intensity of the firestorm surrounding the construct of weight. New understandings from what we might refer to as veterans of the war on weight offer hope for transformation, not just win or lose, but a hermeneutic wager of possibility. Keywords: weight, body image, weight bias, hermeneutics, qualitative research