贾格迪什·巴格沃蒂(Jagdish Bhagwati)1956年毕业于剑桥大学，随后就读于麻省理工学院和牛津大学纳菲尔德学院，师从萨缪尔森、索罗以及希克斯和麦克道格尔。1980年至今一直执教于美国哥伦比亚大学，担任该校A·雷曼（Arthur Lehman）经济学教授和政治学教授。巴格沃蒂教授曾经担任过关贸总协定的经济政策顾问、联合国全球化特别顾问和世界贸易组织顾问。他于1971年和1989年先后创办《国际经济学》和《经济学和政治学》杂志，曾任美国经济协会副主席和美国社会科学院院士。

巴格沃蒂教授的研究方向主要集中于国际贸易、福利经济学和财政学等领域，是国际贸易领域最重要的理论家之一。巴格沃蒂教授的论文《国内扭曲，关税和最适度政府补贴理论》被证明是国际贸易理论史上最有影响力的一篇论文；而《扭曲和福利通论》一文则开创了国际经济学的一个新领域。巴格沃蒂教授在国际经济学领域的地位，使他一度成为“关税”、“配额”、“走私”、“一般均衡状态的有效保护”、“国际移民和货物运输”等词汇的代名词。

A leading international economist looks at many of the key issues of trade policy now confronting the United States and the world in this timely book. Clear, informative, and witty, Jagdish Bhagwati provides the best available analysis of the protection debate and offers a prescription for reform in this turbulent area of trade policy.Bhagwati identifies new and powerful interests and ideologies that are likely to dominate the outcome of the debate. He argues that opposing tendencies can be identified in trade-related ideologies and in the national and sectional interests that lobby on trade policy in pluralistic societies. He offers the prognosis that the forces favoring freer trade are more robust and more fundamental than the forces of protectionism, and that pro trade forces are likely to triumph in the end but only if we adapt appropriately the institutions within which these ideologies and interests must function.Through an appealing combination of text, quotations, cartoons, tables, charts, and graphs, Bhagwati provides a masterly and entertaining look at the forces for and against protection.Jagdish Bhagwati is Arthur Lehman Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. Protectionism is based on the inaugural series of Ohlin Lectures, which he delivered at the Stockholm School of Economics in October of 1987.