State Subsidies in the Global Economy

The issue of state subsidies has received insufficient analytical attention despite its important implications for global trade. This book will be the most up to date statistical analysis of industrial subsidies and one of the very few studies to empirically examine cross-national asset specificity. This book systematically pulls together disparate strands in the study of the political economy of subsidies, and gives attention to the factors that determine the demand for subsidies as well as those that explain the supply of subsidies. Most of the existing literature examines either the demand side or the supply side, to the neglect of the other side of the equation.Using figures from European Union members, the volume highlights the conditional effects of globalization, asset specificity, and domestic institutions. Far from being impotent, democratic states face politically powerful pressures to continue to shield social actors from the vagaries of the global market.