IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ausman/v3y1978i1p49-63.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public Policy and the Australian Tariff Structure

Author

Listed:
  • John Conybeare

    (Australian Graduate School of Management. I am indebted to Chris Adam, Richard E. Caves, Lex Donaldson, Richard Dowell, Stephen Frenkel and Robin Pope for helpful comments and suggestions.)

Abstract

Political scientists and public policy analysts have neglected Australian tariff policy, leaving the subject to normative economic models and election politicking. This paper explores the usefulness of a quantitative technique in testing political theories explaining the tariff structure. The explanations tested are a rational actor theory, a business interest group theory and a labour interest group theory, the last of which best explains the tariff structure. This is significant for tariff reduction policies, since it shows that the most highly protected industries have low wages but not large numbers of workers. Further, the high tariff industries might be a critical element in Australian international economic relations with less developed countries. The similarity of these results with Canadian studies might indicate future pressures on public policies for protection of manufacturing industry in Australia.

Suggested Citation

  • John Conybeare, 1978. "Public Policy and the Australian Tariff Structure," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 3(1), pages 49-63, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:3:y:1978:i:1:p:49-63
    DOI: 10.1177/031289627800300104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/031289627800300104
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/031289627800300104?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pincus, J J, 1975. "Pressure Groups and the Pattern of Tariffs," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 83(4), pages 757-778, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bin, Sheng, 2000. "The Political Economy of Trade Policy in China," Working Papers 10/2000, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy.
    2. Richard Pomfret, 2003. "Trade and Exchange Rate Policies in Formerly Centrally Planned Economies," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 585-612, April.
    3. John Tressler, 1978. "Political Goods and Trade Theory," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 22(1), pages 51-59, March.
    4. Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto & Maria Petrova & Ruben Enikolopov, 2008. "The Dracula effect: voter information and trade policy," Economics Working Papers 1296, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Oct 2020.
    5. Glismann, Hans H. & Spinanger, Dean, 1984. "Clothing the world efficiently: The MFA and consumers," Kiel Working Papers 208, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    6. Giacomo Ponzetto, 2008. "Asymmetric information and trade policy," Economics Working Papers 1253, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Oct 2010.
    7. Panagariya, Arvind & Rodrik, Dani, 1993. "Political-Economy Arguments for a Uniform Tariff," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 34(3), pages 685-703, August.
    8. Wen Li Cheng & Meng-Chun Liu & Xiaokai Yang, 2005. "A Ricardian Model With Endogenous Comparative Advantage And Endogenous Trade Policy Regimes," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: An Inframarginal Approach To Trade Theory, chapter 7, pages 109-130, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Robert Pahre, 1998. "Reactions and Reciprocity," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 42(4), pages 467-492, August.
    10. Robert C. Feenstra & Jagdish N. Bhagwati, 1982. "Tariff Seeking and the Efficient Tariff," NBER Chapters, in: Import Competition and Response, pages 245-262, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Mirabelle Muûls & Dimitra Petropoulou, 2013. "A swing state theory of trade protection in the Electoral College," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(2), pages 705-724, May.
    12. Grossman, Gene M. & Helpman, Elhanan, 1996. "Rent dissipation, free riding, and trade policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 795-803, April.
    13. Donald Feaver & Kenneth Wilson, 1998. "Unlocking Australia's Contingent Protection Black Box," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 74(224), pages 62-73, March.
    14. Emile van Ommeren & Arlo Poletti & Dirk De Bièvre, 2021. "The European Union and the political economy of enforcing international trade rules," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(3), pages 377-400, September.
    15. Rodrik, Dani, 1994. "What does the Political Economy Literature on Trade Policy (Not) Tell Us That We Ought to Know?," CEPR Discussion Papers 1039, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Kudo, Tomoshige & Matsubara, Fumitaka & Katsura, Shigetoshi, 1978. "Magnetic properties and distribution of thermal averages of spins in the one-dimensional random mixture of Ising spins of S = 1 and12," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 255-272.
    17. Saha, Amrita, 2019. "Trade policy & lobbying effectiveness: Theory and evidence for India," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 165-192.
    18. Friedrich Schneider & Jörg Naumann, 1982. "Interest groups in democracies — How influential are they?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 281-303, January.
    19. Chen, Baizhu & Feng, Yi, 2001. "Openness and trade policy in China: an industrial analysis," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 323-341.
    20. Thorsten Drautzburg & Igor Livshits & Mark L. J. Wright, 2022. "Polarized Contributions but Convergent Agendas," Working Papers 22-29, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:3:y:1978:i:1:p:49-63. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.agsm.edu.au .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.