| Under administered protection policy such as antidumping duty and countervailing duty, import-competing firms have the following three kinds of protection-seeking activities: (i) manipulating the input variables to the rules of administered protection; (ii) filing a petition for administered protection; and (iii) influencing Congress to change the rules of administered protection.; In Chapter 1, we study a public-good problem among the import-competing firms. We point out that under administered protection policy, quantity decision of the firms can influence the level of protection, and thus it has the property of a public good. We show that, in spite of the public-good property, the quantity produced by the import-competing firms, and the level of protection, can be higher when the firms are noncooperative than when they are cooperative, and that the level of protection does not necessarily decrease as the number of the firms increases.; In Chapter 2, we examine how the protection-seeking effort of import-competing firms, in the form of a petition for antidumping duty, is affected by the foreign direct investment (FDI) opportunity of the foreign exporting firm. We show that the import-competing firms may find it optimal to deter FDI, and when FDI is deterred, the protection-seeking effort decreases as the duty increases. This result leads to the following interesting strategic export by the foreign firm. When the future duty depends on the current export of the foreign firm, the foreign firm may increase its export in order to dampen the protection seeking of the import-competing firms.; In Chapter 3, we suggest an explanation why administered protection is a preferred instrument of restricting trade, considering administered protection as an institutional form alternative to legislated protection. We discuss that the government's choice of trade policy is restricted under the regime of administered protection, and that such a restriction can eliminate, or mitigate, the conflicting interests of lobby groups, making the lobby groups better off under the regime of administered protection than under the regime of legislated protection. Also, we show that switching the regime from legislated protection to administered protection can improve the total welfare of the economy. |
