Volume 30, Number 4 (Fall) 1995
Deardorff, Alan V., and Jon D. Haveman. 1995. "The Effects of U.S. Trade Laws on Poverty in America." Journal of Human Resources 30(4):807-825.
This study examines the relationship between the application of U.S. trade laws and the distribution of income and levels of poverty in America. Specifically, we examine the recent use of "administered protection" by U.S. industries and compare the experiences of these industries under the trade laws with their associated poverty rates, wage levels, and rates of unemployment. This study seeks to determine whether this protection has served to alleviate or to exacerbate poverty. We find an inherent bias in the trade laws toward increasing the incidence of poverty.
Alan V. Deardorff is a Professor of economics at the University of Michigan. Jon D. Haveman is a Professor of economics at Purdue University. The authors would like to thank Sheldon Danziger, Janet Netz, Bob Stern, Zhong Zhang, and a pair of anonymous referees for many useful comments on this project. Helpful comments were also received from other participants in the research Seminar in International Economics at the University of Michigan and in the Small Grants Research Seminar held in Washington, D.C. on April 26, 1991. The Washington seminar was sponsored jointly by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and by the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at the University of Wisconsin. The IRP provided primary funding for this project. The authors also benefited from a grant from the Ford Foundation in support of a program of research in trade policy in the Institute of Public Policy Studies at the University of Michigan. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in June 1996 through June 1999 from Jon D. Haveman, Krannert School of Management , Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN 47907-1310.
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