Impacts of Protectionism and Political Conflict: Recent Developments

With the growing concerns about increasing protectionism, several empirical studies have investigated the effects of protection. While these studies presented interesting and important findings, few of them have discussed their frameworks and results in a comprehensive manner. This paper reviews these recent studies. We first show that they mainly employ either quantitative trade models or difference - in - differences design to investigate protectionism. We then discuss the strengths and limitations of these approaches. Finally, we consider possible directions for future research.