Did late-nineteenth-century US tariffs promote infant industries? Evidencefrom the tinplate industry

Did late-nineteenth-century U.S. tariffs promote infant industries? After e arlier failures, the tinplate industry became established and flourished af ter receiving protection with the 1890 McKinley tariff. Treating producers' entry and exit decisions as endogenous, a probability model is estimated t o determine the conditions under which domestic tinplate production will oc cur. Counterfactual simulations indicate that, without the McKinley duties, domestic tinplate production would have arisen about a decade later as U.S . iron and steel input prices converged with those in Britain. Although the tariff accelerated the industry's development, welfare calculations sugges t that protection does not pass a cost-benefit test.