Although it is widely acknowledged that an understanding of mass attitudes about trade is crucial to the political economy of foreign commerce, only a handful of studies have addressed this topic. These studies have focused largely on testing two models, both of which emphasize that trade preferences are shaped by how trade affects an individual’s income. The factor endowments or Heckscher- Ohlin model posits that these preferences are affected primarily by a person’s skills. The specific factors or Ricardo-Viner model posits that trade preferences depend on the industry in which a person works. We find little support for either of these models using two representative national surveys of Americans. The only potential exception involves the effects of education. Initial tests indicate that educational attainment and support for open trade are directly related, which is often interpreted as support for the Heckscher-Ohlin model. However, further analysis reveals that education’s effects are less representative of skill than of individuals’ anxieties about involvement with out-groups in their own country and beyond. Furthermore, we find strong evidence that trade attitudes are guided less by material self-interest than by perceptions of how the U.S. economy as a whole is affected by trade.
That is from a new paper by Edward Mansfield and Diana Mutz (gated; ungated). I think these findings are worth attention, if only because the notion that interests drive attitudes about trade is so prevalent.
To restate the key findings: income doesn’t affect attitudes. Education appears to matter—people with higher levels of formal education are more likely to prefer free trade—but the effect is spurious. It disappears once Mansfield and Mutz control for isolationism and ethnocentrism. They argue:
Isolationism, a negative attitude toward out-groups, and antipathy toward open trade all reflect a sense of insularity and separatism. In short, trade preferences are driven less by economic considerations and more by an individual’s psychological worldview.
And, apropos of Bryan Kaplan’s book, comes this other interesting finding.
Nonetheless, economic knowledge has a small impact on trade attitudes: taking an economics class or understanding that economists argue that free trade is beneficial increases the predicted value of the KN dependent variable [support for free trade] by only 2 to 3 percent, holding constant the remaining variables in the model.
In short, it’s not the labor market position or skills of educated people that matter. Neither is it what they know about trade. It’s what they believe. Values trump interests. (Yet again.)
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An IO article by Hainmueller & Hiscox that came out a couple of years ago reached similar conclusions. Though, given the role of concentrated interests – particularly industry lobbies – to the formation of trade policy; I wonder whether broader public opinion is that important. The study of lobbying behavior may give more traction.
James: Good points. I can only recommend the paper again: M&M engage both H&H and the role of public opinion.
I don’t really understand how they dare claim that education is “spurious” given the type of models they estimate. First of all, if you actually look at their dependent variable it is really a measure of a preference for globalization rather than trade specifically. The main conclusion is that people who are more “isolationist” also don’t like globalization. Brilliant!!!! Then they also include measures of how individuals believe that trade affects themselves and the US to “predict” trade preferences. It is pretty obvious that if one includes value scales as independent variables that are pretty similar to the value scale that is the dependent variable, that more objective measures, such as education and income, are going to be washed out.
The survey questions, according to my admittedly quick perusal of the paper, are (1)should int’l trade be encouraged or discouraged? and 2)should the govt negotiate more free trade agreements like NAFTA?
I tend to be for ‘free trade’ (i.e. lower barriers) but only if bilateral and other trade agreements incorporate more effective labor and environmental provisions than Nafta contains. I’m not sure, therefore, how I would answer these questions, which leads me to be somewhat dubious about the study’s value and its conclusions linking ‘nasty’ views (isolationism, suspicion of out-groups) and opposition to ‘free trade.’
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