Title

The Economics and Politics of Administered Protection: An Analysis of the Japanese Safeguard System for Agricultural Goods

Abstract

This paper models the lobbying activity concerning a safeguard measure and applies it to the empirical analysis to see if the monitoring system on a safeguard measure is administered along with the WTO agreement or affected by political factors. The model analysis describes that there exists a potential mechanism that a rise in imports induces a political activity by producers. The empirical analysis shows that the monitoring system on a safeguard measure is not so neutral to the WTO conditions and it is more or less influenced by the political factors.

Koichi　KAGITANI
Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration
Kobe University
Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe
657-8501 Japan
Phone: (81) 78 803 7036
Fax: (81) 78 803 7059

Hirofumi TOMINAGA
Graduate school of Economics, Kobe University

Kozo HARIMAYA
Faculty of Economics, Sapporo Gakuin University