Rent Destruction and the Political Viability of Free Trade Agreements
研究自由贸易协定（FTA）的政治可行性，核心是“租金破坏”效应：FTA通过消除区内贸易壁垒，降低进口竞争行业游说提高外部关税的动机，从而减少寻租产生的租金。模型表明，租金破坏可能削弱甚至完全排除福利降低型FTA的政治可行性，这与早期区域主义文献的结论形成对比。
This paper studies the political viability of free trade agreements (FTAs). The key element of the analysis is the "rent destruction" that these arrangements induce: by eliminating intrabloc trade barriers, an FTA lowers the incentives of import-competing industries to lobby for higher external tariffs, thereby inducing a reduction of the rents created in the lobbying process. Using a conventional competitive model, I show that the prospect of rent destruction can critically undermine (and in some cases rule out entirely) the political viability of welfarereducing FTAs. This result contrasts sharply with findings from the earlier regionalism literature.