We develop a three-stage lobbying game to explain why the WTO prohibits export subsidies but not import tariffs. In this model, the government chooses trade policies (i.e., import tariffs or export subsidies) to maximize a weighted sum of social welfare and lobbying contributions. We argue that the economic rents from export subsidies cannot be contained exclusively within lobby groups, because new capitalists, who will enter the growing export sector, freely benefit from export subsidies without paying political contributions at the time of lobbying. In the contracting import-competing industries, no new entrants erode the protection rents from tariffs. Therefore, the government receives large political contributions by protecting these import-competing industries. We show that, given that capital reallocation is costly, when the free-rider problem is severe, the government will sign a trade agreement that prohibits only export subsidies. In the extended model in which the government has a continous policy space, we show that there is a non-empty set of parameter values such that the government would prohibit export subsidies while allowing for positive tariffs.

我们开发了一个三阶段的游说游戏来解释为什么 WTO 禁止出口补贴而不是进口关税。在这个模型中，政府选择贸易政策（即进口关税或出口补贴）来最大化社会福利和游说贡献的加权总和。我们认为，出口补贴的经济租金不能完全包含在游说团体中，因为将进入不断增长的出口部门的新资本家可以自由地从出口补贴中受益，而无需在游说时支付政治捐款。在承包进口竞争行业，没有新进入者侵蚀关税的保护租金。因此，政府通过保护这些与进口竞争的行业获得大量政治捐款。我们表明，鉴于资本重新配置成本高昂，当搭便车问题严重时，政府将签署仅禁止出口补贴的贸易协定。在政府具有连续政策空间的扩展模型中，我们表明存在一组非空参数值，这样政府将在允许正关税的同时禁止出口补贴。