Since the beginning of the eighties there has been an upsurge in the empirical analysis of the political economy of trade restrictions in industrialized and developing countries. These studies, which have been surveyed by Anderson and Baldwin (1981) and Amelung (1989) attempted to explain the structure of protection and changes therein by establishing a causal relationship between government intervention and characteristics of firms and industries in order to derive the determinants of government behaviour with respect to the implementation of trade barriers. It has been shown, that those sectors in a position to form effective pressure groups were more successful in obtaining effective protection. The ultimate aim of these studies was to develop further insights into the government's decision making process with respect to trade liberalization policies and structural adjustment programs. The key issue in designing a sustainable structural adjustment program concerns the appropriate trade-off between reducing the intensity of income redistribution effects and maintaining the efficiency of the adjustment process (Mussa (1986)).
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