Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Open Trade for Sale: Lobbying by Productive Exporting Firms

现有的国际政治经济学理论预测了产业层面贸易政策方面的政治利益冲突：进口竞争产业希望受到保护，免受外国竞争，而出口产业则要求开放贸易。然而，在大多数国家，一些公司出口，而另一些公司面对进口产品的竞争，即使在同一行业内也只向其国内市场提供货物。当进口竞争产业与出口竞争产业之间的区别变得不明确时，谁是支持贸易自由化的政治角色，谁是保护主义的支持者？为了解释这一点，拟议的项目将制造企业视为重要的政治参与者，而不像其他研究将它们主要视为经济主体。对这种政治行为的详细研究将凸显出各国政府在制定贸易政策时面临的一个新的压力来源。智力价值：这是国际政治经济学领域的首批项目之一，旨在检验出口企业的游说对贸易自由化是否有影响。该项目旨在通过创建一个新的游说数据集来确定政治机制，该数据集自动提取和更新所有制造公司的详细游说活动，该数据集可根据1995年的游说披露法获得。然后，任何至少游说过一次的公司都将与多个金融数据库中的公司进行匹配，以确定它们在哪些贸易政策中有直接的经济利益。即使属于同一行业，企业也会生产不同的产品。例如，一些纺织公司用羊毛生产衬衫，而另一些公司用亚麻生产衬衫。因此，很难假设这些公司对贸易政策有相同的偏好。该项目表明，当产品差异足够大时，出口公司游说的动机可能比进口竞争对手的动机更强。产品差异化意味着游说只会使少数实际生产不同产品的公司受益。因此，该理论预测，出口企业更有可能通过游说来克服它们的集体问题。该数据集将用于测试一个行业内的高度产品差异化是否与1)出口公司的积极游说和2)贸易自由化有关。更广泛的影响：在全球化时代，控制货物、服务和人员流动的跨国公司已经成为制定贸易、移民、环境和安全政策的重要政治代理人。有了这个项目提供的新见解，社会科学家和政策制定者将能够理解在什么条件下，商品和服务的生产者可以积极地影响世界各国政府的决策。整个数据集将每季度更新一次，并向公众开放。游说数据集是由自1999年以来游说美国政府的任何国内外实体组成的小组，它将允许社会科学家探索与国防、健康和能源等游说相关的研究课题。

Existing theories in international political economy predict conflicting political interests with respect to trade policy at the industry level: import-competing industries want protection from foreign competition whereas exporting industries demand open trade. However, in most countries some firms export while others, facing competition from imported products, provide goods only to their domestic markets even within the same industry. Who are the political actors supporting trade liberalization, and who are the supporters of protection when the distinction between import-competing industries versus export industries has become unclear? To explain this, the proposed project considers manufacturing firms as important political actors unlike other studies that consider them mainly as economic agents. A detailed study of such political behavior would underscore a new source of pressure faced by governments when setting trade policies.Intellectual Merit: This is one of the first projects in the field of international political economy that tests whether there is an effect of lobbying by exporting firms on trade liberalization. The project aims to identify the political mechanism by creating a new lobbying dataset that automatically extracts and updates detailed lobbying activities of all manufacturing firms, which became available under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995. Any firm that lobbied at least once will then be matched with firms in multiple finance databases in order to identify the trade policies in which they have a direct economic interest.Firms produce different products even when they belong to a same industry. For example, some textile firms produce shirts made of wool while others make them with linen. Consequently, it is hard to assume that these firms would have same preference over trade policy. This project shows that the incentives of exporting firms to lobby can be stronger than those of their import-competing counterparts when products are sufficiently different. Product differentiation implies that lobbying will benefit only a small number of firms that actually produce the different products in question. As a result, the theory predicts that exporting firms are more likely to lobby overcoming their collective problems. The dataset would be used to test whether a high degree of product differentiation within an industry is associated with 1) active lobbying by exporting firms and 2) trade liberalization. Broader Impacts: In the era of globalization, multinational corporations that control the movements of goods, services and people have become important political agents in setting trade, immigration, environment, and security policies. With the new insights offered by this project, social scientists and policy makers will be able to understand under what condition producers of goods and services can actively influence decisions made by governments around the world. The entire dataset would be updated quarterly and will be publicly available. The lobbying dataset, a panel of any foreign and domestic entities who have lobbied the U.S. government since 1999, would allow social scientists to explore research topics related to lobbying such as defense, health, and energy.