Abstract: With an objective function of local officials, consists of social welfare, political promotion and rent seeking, and using duopoly model with asymmetric participators, we investigate the economic and welfare effects of local protection under different information structure and explain why local protectionism prevails in China. Under complete information, local protection improves local producer’s profits, but reduces the welfare and causes resources misallocation. In contrast, the existence of smuggling under incomplete information changes the equilibrium of the original game and not only local protection improves the utility of local officials but also local social welfare under a suitable punishment level and supervising effort. Therefore, protection isn’t good-for-nothing, proper protection exists due to both theoretical and practical reasons.

Key words: local protection, political promotion, rent seeking, information Structure

摘要： 通过构建一个包含福利、晋升和寻租诉求的官员目标函数，利用实力不对等的双寡头模型考察了不同信息结构中官员实施地方保护的经济和福利效应，进而诠释了中国地方保护主义盛行的原因。研究发现，完全信息情形中地方保护提高了本地厂商的利润，却损害了地区总福利和资源配置效率。不完全信息情形中偷卖现象的出现改变了原博弈的结构，设定合理的惩罚措施和侦察努力程度，地方保护不仅增加了地方官员的效用水平，还可能改善了地区总福利。因此，地方保护并非一无是处，适度保护存在理论和现实基础。

关键词: 地方保护, 晋升, 寻租, 信息结构