Explaining agriculture protectionism: A consumer-based approach to trade policy formation

Trade protection literature is based on the interactions between producers, consumers, and government. Most recent empirical work tends to focus only on the institutional and/or producer determinants of trade policy in order to explain variation among countries. In many sectors, such as agriculture, this approach yields little success. I propose that much of this literature, by omitting the interests of the consumer, misinterprets the theory on which their work is based and leads to incomplete conclusions. I present two alternatives to these conventional models: one that relies specifically on consumer determinants and one that relies on both producer and consumer determinants. The latter of these models suggests that a new definition of protection is necessary in order to determine what factors affect its implementation. These comprehensive models present a new approach to understanding trade protection, while remaining loyal to the original work in this field. The results of these new models are more robust than those of their predecessors and provide a deeper insight into some of the core assumptions of trade policy in general.