IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6084.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rational Atrophy: The US Steel Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Aaron Tornell

Abstract

During the seventies and eighties the US steel industry received trade protection. However, these rents were not used to improve competitiveness. Instead, they were reflected in higher wages and a greater share of profits invested in sectors not related to steel. Moreover, the steel industry failed to adopt technological innovations on a timely basis and was displaced by the minimills. We rationalize these puzzling outcomes using a dynamic game between workers and firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Aaron Tornell, 1997. "Rational Atrophy: The US Steel Industry," NBER Working Papers 6084, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6084
    Note: PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6084.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lenway, Stefanie & Morck, Randall & Yeung, Bernard, 1996. "Rent Seeking, Protectionism and Innovation in the American Steel Industry," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(435), pages 410-421, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Blonigen, Bruce A. & Wilson, Wesley W., 2010. "Foreign subsidization and excess capacity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 200-211, March.
    2. Tansey, Michael & Raju, Sudhakar & Stellern, Michael, 2005. "Price controls, trade protectionism and political business cycles in the U.S. steel industry," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 27(9), pages 1097-1109, December.
    3. Aaron Tornell, 1999. "Privatizing the Privatized," NBER Working Papers 7206, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Benjamin H. Liebman & Kara M. Reynolds, 2009. "Innovation Through Protection: Does Safeguard Protection Increase Investment in R and D?," Working Papers 2009-18, American University, Department of Economics.
    5. Rogers, Robert P., 2013. "Bankruptcy and steel plant shutdowns," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 165-174.
    6. Hasanbeigi, Ali & Arens, Marlene & Cardenas, Jose Carlos Rojas & Price, Lynn & Triolo, Ryan, 2016. "Comparison of carbon dioxide emissions intensity of steel production in China, Germany, Mexico, and the United States," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 127-139.
    7. Benjamin H. Liebman & Kara M. Reynolds, 2015. "Trade Liberalisation and Capital Spending by US Manufacturers," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(11), pages 1763-1780, November.
    8. Fabiano Schivardi & Martin Schneider, 2008. "Strategic Experimentation and Disruptive Technological Change," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(2), pages 386-412, April.

    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. Tan Ngoc Vu & Duc Hong Vo & Michael McAleer, 2019. "Rent seeking for export licenses: Application to the Vietnam rice market," Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE 2019-13, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico.
    2. J. Mutti & R. Sampson & B. Yeung, 2000. "The effects of the Uruguay round: empirical evidence from U.S. industry," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 18(1), pages 59-69, January.
    3. Blonigen, Bruce A. & Liebman, Benjamin H. & Pierce, Justin R. & Wilson, Wesley W., 2013. "Are all trade protection policies created equal? Empirical evidence for nonequivalent market power effects of tariffs and quotas," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 369-378.
    4. Benjamin H. Liebman & Kara M. Reynolds, 2009. "Innovation Through Protection: Does Safeguard Protection Increase Investment in R and D?," Working Papers 2009-18, American University, Department of Economics.
    5. Hadani, Michael & Doh, Jonathan P. & Schneider, Marguerite, 2019. "Social movements and corporate political activity: Managerial responses to socially oriented shareholder activism," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 156-170.
    6. Ferdinand A Gul & Arifur Khan & Karen Lai & Getie Dessalegn & Mohammad Badrul Muttakin, 2023. "Corporate political donations and audit fees: Some evidence from Australian audit pricing," Post-Print hal-04511816, HAL.
    7. Brown, Jeffrey R. & Huang, Jiekun, 2020. "All the president's friends: Political access and firm value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 415-431.
    8. Aradhna Aggarwal, 2008. "Anti-dumping Protection: Who Gets It? An Exploratory Analysis of Anti-dumping Use in the Most Active User Countries," Working Papers id:1374, eSocialSciences.
    9. Seung-Hyun Lee & Kyeungrae Oh, 2007. "Corruption in Asia: Pervasiveness and arbitrariness," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 97-114, March.
    10. Huang, Kenneth G. & Jia, Nan & Ge, Yeyanran, 2024. "Forced to innovate? Consequences of United States' anti-dumping sanctions on innovations of Chinese exporters," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(1).
    11. Zheng, Weiting & Ang, Siah Hwee & Singh, Kulwant, 2022. "The interface of market and nonmarket strategies: Political ties and strategic competitive actions," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 57(4).
    12. Gabriel Sánchez, 1998. "Lobbying, innovation and protectionist cycles," Economics Working Papers 272, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    13. Levin, Mark (Левин, Марк) & Shilova, Nadezhda V. (Шилова, Надежда), 2016. "Rentseeking Behavior in Systems with a Complex Structure [Рентоориентированное Поведение В Системах Со Сложной Структурой]," Working Papers 2272, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    14. Seung-Hyun Lee & Sungjin Hong, 2012. "Corruption and subsidiary profitability: US MNC subsidiaries in the Asia Pacific region," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 949-964, December.
    15. Bruce A. Blonigen & Benjamin H. Liebman & Wesley W. Wilson, 2007. "Trade Policy and Market Power: The Case of the US Steel Industry," NBER Working Papers 13671, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Hylke Vandenbussche & Ziga Zarnic, 2008. "US Safeguards on Steel and the Markups of European Producers," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 144(3), pages 458-490, October.
    17. Randall Morck & Bernard Yeung, 2003. "Family Control and the Rent-Seeking Society," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 585, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    18. Li, Shanjun & Kahn, Matthew E. & Nickelsburg, Jerry, 2015. "Public transit bus procurement: The role of energy prices, regulation and federal subsidies," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 57-71.
    19. Ana Rodríguez-Álvarez & Ignacio Rosal & José Baños-Pino, 2007. "The cost of strikes in the Spanish mining sector: modelling an undesirable input with a distance function," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 73-83, February.
    20. Blonigen, Bruce A. & Wilson, Wesley W., 2010. "Foreign subsidization and excess capacity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 200-211, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nbr:nberwo:6084. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.