A quantile-based test of protection for sale model

This paper proposes a new test of the Protection for Sale (PFS) model by Grossman and Helpman (1994). Unlike existing methods in the literature, our approach does not require any data on political organization. We use quantile and IV quantile regressions in our tests, using the data from Gawande and Bandyopadhyay (2000). Surprisingly, the results do not provide any evidence favoring the PFS model. We also explain why previous work may have found support for it.