Tommaso Aquilante, ECARES

Bureaucrats or Politicians ?  Evidence from US Antidumping Policy

Abstract. This paper relates party affliation to the US Antidumping (AD) policy. Using 1980-2010's final votes of the US International Trade Commission (ITC) on material injury, I find robust evidence that the ITC's commissioners party color matters to explain their votes on AD. Democratic commissioners are indeed found to be systematically and significantly more protectionist than republican ones. After controlling for other commissioners' characteristics and industry, target-country and year effects, Democrats are, on average, 15% more likely to vote affirmatively on AD.