A Quantile-based Test of Protection for Sale Model

Abstract

This paper proposes a new test of the Protection for Sale (PFS) model by Grossman and Helpman (1994). Unlike existing methods in the literature, our approach does not require any data on political organization. We use quantile and quantile IV regressions to do so using the data from Gawande and Bandyopadhyay (2000). Surprisingly, the results do not provide any evidence favoring the PFS model. We also explain why previous work may have inadvertently found support for it.Protection for Sale, Lobbying, Political Economy, Quantile Regression