Winners and Losers in International Trade: The Effects on US Presidential Voting

Jensen, Jesper; Quinn, Dennis P.; Weymouth, Stephen

doi:10.1017/s0020818317000194

Cited by 185 publications

(113 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Our findings relate more broadly to a literature on the effects of economic shocks on voters(Scheve and Slaughter, 2001;Bagues and Esteve-Volart, 2014;Jensen, Quinn, and Weymouth, 2016;Charles and Stephens, 2013;Brunner, Ross, and Washington, 2011;Giuliano and Spilimbergo, 2014) and political cleavages(Rogowski, 1987;Hiscox, 2002).…”

supporting

confidence: 69%

Instrumental Variables and Causal Mechanisms: Unpacking The Effect of Trade on Workers and Voters

Dippel

Gold

Heblich³

et al. 2017

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractIt is often the case that an endogenous treatment variable causally affects an intermediate variable that in turn causally affects a final outcome. Using an Instrumental Variable (IV) identifies the causal effect of the endogenous treatment on both the intermediate and the final outcome variable, but not the extent to which the intermediate variable affects the final outcome. We present a new testable framework in which a single IV suffices to also estimate the causal effect of the intermediate variable on the final outcome. We use this framework to investigate to what extent German voters responded to the labor market turmoil caused by increasing trade with low-wage manufacturing countries. We first establish that import competition increased voters' support for only extreme (right) parties. We then decompose this populist 'total effect' into a 'mediated effect' running through labor market adjustments and a 'direct effect' of trade exposure on voting behavior. We find the total consists of a large populist effect driven by labor markets and a relatively smaller but moderating direct effect. Our approach provides a template that may be useful in a broad range of empirical applications studying causal mechanisms in observational data.

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supporting

confidence: 69%

Instrumental Variables and Causal Mechanisms: Unpacking The Effect of Trade on Workers and Voters

Dippel

Gold

Heblich³

et al. 2017

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“…Recent papers by Kenneth Rogoff (2016) and Antonio Fatás and Lawrence Summers (2016) connect sluggish 3. Jensen, Quinn, and Weymouth (2017) also document a correlation between import competition from China and Mexico and employment in low-skill services with voting against the incumbent.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 85%

The European Trust Crisis and the Rise of Populism

Algan¹,

Guriev²,

Papaioannou³

et al. 2017

Brookings Papers on Economic Activity

387

122

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We study the implications of the Great Recession for voting for antiestablishment parties, as well as for general trust and political attitudes, using regional data across Europe. We find a strong relationship between increases in unemployment and voting for nonmainstream parties, especially populist ones. Moreover, unemployment increases in tandem with declining trust toward national and European political institutions, though we find only weak or no effects of unemployment on interpersonal trust. The correlation between unemployment and attitudes toward immigrants is muted, especially for their cultural impact. To explore causality, we extract the component of increases in unemployment explained by the precrisis structure of the economy, in particular the share of construction in regional value added, which is strongly related both to the buildup preceding and the bursting of the crisis. Our results imply that crisis-driven economic insecurity is a substantial determinant of populism and political distrust. A specter is haunting Europe and the West-the specter of populism.

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“…The overwhelming majority of observational studies have found support for the economic interests hypothesis, i.e., that the economic hardship of voters drives their support for protectionism. Analyses of Donald Trump's vote gains in the 2016 US presidential election, especially in the Rust Belt region, corroborate this view (Autor et al 2016, Jensen et al 2017. [See Norris & Inglehart (2019) and Mutz (2018) for counterevidence, although both works seek to explain support for right-wing parties or candidates, not necessarily protectionism.]…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Survey Experiments in International Political Economy: What We (Don't) Know About the Backlash Against Globalization

Naoi

2020

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

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This article reviews the cumulation of evidence from survey experiments in the field of international political economy (IPE) and discusses their strengths and weaknesses in explaining the backlash against globalization. I first review the advancements made by the most commonly used survey experiment design in IPE, namely the Globalization-as-Treatment design, in which scholars randomly assign information about different features of globalization and solicit respondents’ attitudes toward protectionism. Then I discuss three issues with this design in addressing key puzzles in the emergence of globalization backlash: ( a) using a coarse informational treatment that stacks the deck against the economic self-interest hypothesis; ( b) overattributing globalization as a source of hardship; and ( c) neglecting heterogeneous room-to-maneuver beliefs across and within countries. The article suggests alternative designs and strategies to study these questions. Evidence from survey experiments suggests that much of the globalization backlash we witness today is deeply rooted in domestic politics.

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Winners and Losers in International Trade: The Effects on US Presidential Voting

Cited by 185 publications

References 76 publications

Instrumental Variables and Causal Mechanisms: Unpacking The Effect of Trade on Workers and Voters

Instrumental Variables and Causal Mechanisms: Unpacking The Effect of Trade on Workers and Voters

The European Trust Crisis and the Rise of Populism

Survey Experiments in International Political Economy: What We (Don't) Know About the Backlash Against Globalization

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