Infant–Industry Tariff Protection with Pressure Groups

This paper analyzes the increasing tariff protection in the Spanish iron and steel industry over the first third of the 20th century. Learning effects are explicitly included to model a dynamic game of trade liberalization. The government chooses the tariff level while firms decide how much to produce each period. Firm’s production decisions determine their future cost levels. Assuming that learning reduces only fixed costs, the dynamic game may be solved in closed form, so that the optimality and time consistency of the actual policy can be evaluated. Furthermore, the model is used to measure the relative importance of producers and consumers on the government’s equilibrium tariff strategy. The model is calibrated for year 1913 and it is shown that the existence of important, unexploited, dynamic economies of scale may have justified high tariff levels at that time. In addition the results also show that the Spanish iron and steel producers behaved more competitively than what is commonly assumed, and that the government’s protection policy was not significantly conditioned by steel producers. JEL: C73, F12, L61.