[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/intorg/v71y2017is1ps85-s108_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why Don't Trade Preferences Reflect Economic Self-Interest?

Author

Listed:
  • Rho, Sungmin
  • Tomz, Michael
Abstract
The dominant approach to the study of international political economy assumes that the policy preferences of individuals and groups reflect economic self-interest. Recent research has called this assumption into question by suggesting that voters do not have economically self-interested preferences about trade policy. We investigate one potential explanation for this puzzling finding: economic ignorance. We show that most voters do not understand the economic consequences of protectionism. We then use experiments to study how voters would respond if they had more information about how trade barriers affect the distribution of income. We find that distributional cues generate two opposing effects: they make people more likely to express self-serving policy preferences, but they also make people more sensitive to the interests of others. In our study both reactions were evident, but selfish responses outweighed altruistic ones. Thus, if people knew more about the distributional effects of trade, the correlation between personal interests and policy preferences would tighten. By showing how the explanatory power of economic self-interest depends on beliefs about causality, this research provides a foundation for more realistic, behaviorally informed theories of international political economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Rho, Sungmin & Tomz, Michael, 2017. "Why Don't Trade Preferences Reflect Economic Self-Interest?," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(S1), pages 85-108, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:71:y:2017:i:s1:p:s85-s108_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0020818316000394/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Céline Carrère & Marcelo Olarreaga & Damian Raess, 2022. "Labor clauses in trade agreements: Hidden protectionism?," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 453-483, July.
    2. Cevat G. Aksoy & Sergei Guriev & Daniel S. Treisman, 2018. "Globalization, Government Popularity, and the Great Skill Divide," NBER Working Papers 25062, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Nils D. Steiner & Philipp Harms, 2020. "Local Trade Shocks and the Nationalist Backlash in Political Attitudes: Panel Data Evidence from Great Britain," Working Papers 2014, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    4. Braml, Martin & Felbermayr, Gabriel, 2018. "Understanding Free Trade Attitudes: Evidence from Europe," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181591, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. D’Ambrosio, Anna & Leombruni, Roberto & Razzolini, Tiziano, 2021. ""Fear Is the Path to the Dark Side". Electoral Results and the Workplace Safety of Immigrants," IZA Discussion Papers 14322, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Dolls, Mathias & Wehrhöfer, Nils, 2021. "Attitudes towards euro area reforms: Evidence from a randomized survey experiment," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    7. Lodh, Rishab & Dey, Oindrila, 2023. "“Fake news alert!”: A game of misinformation and news consumption behavior," MPRA Paper 118371, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Yotam Margalit, 2019. "Economic Insecurity and the Causes of Populism, Reconsidered," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(4), pages 152-170, Fall.
    9. Tobias Heinrich & Timothy M. Peterson, 2020. "Foreign Policy as Pork-barrel Spending: Incentives for Legislator Credit Claiming on Foreign Aid," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 64(7-8), pages 1418-1442, August.
    10. Patrick Bayer & Federica Genovese, 2020. "Beliefs About Consequences from Climate Action Under Weak Climate Institutions: Sectors, Home Bias, and International Embeddedness," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 20(4), pages 28-50, Autumn.
    11. Rodríguez Chatruc, Marisol & Stein, Ernesto & Vlaicu, Razvan, 2021. "How issue framing shapes trade attitudes: Evidence from a multi-country survey experiment," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    12. Costas Hadjiyiannis & Doruk Iris & Chrysostomos Tabakis, 2018. "Consumer Nationalism and Multilateral Trade Cooperation," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 10-2018, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    13. Nils D Steiner, 2018. "Attitudes towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in the European Union: The treaty partner heuristic and issue attention," European Union Politics, , vol. 19(2), pages 255-277, June.
    14. Barbara Dluhosch, 2021. "The Gender Gap in Globalization and Well-Being," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 16(1), pages 351-378, February.
    15. Sarah Maxey, 2021. "Limited Spin: When the Public Punishes Leaders Who Lie about Military Action," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 65(2-3), pages 283-312, February.
    16. Céline CARRERE & Marcelo OLARREAGA & Damian RAESS, 2017. "Labor Clauses in Trade Agreements: worker protection or protectionism?," Working Papers P200, FERDI.
    17. Nguyen, Quynh & Malesky, Edmund, 2021. "Fish or steel? New evidence on the environment-economy trade-off in developing Vietnam," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    18. Bruno Larue, 2018. "Economic Integration Reconsidered," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 66(1), pages 5-25, March.
    19. Federico Maria Ferrara & Jörg Haas & Andrew Peterson & Thomas Sattler, 2020. "Exports vs. Investment: How Public Discourse Shapes Support for External Imbalances ," Working Papers hal-02569351, HAL.
    20. Rickard, Stephanie, 2022. "Economic geography, politics, and the world trade regime," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 113857, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    21. Nicole Wu, 2023. "“Restrict foreigners, not robots”: Partisan responses to automation threat," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 505-528, July.
    22. Sung Eun Kim & Sujin Cha, 2022. "Do Voters Reward Politicians for Trade Liberalization? Evidence from South Korea," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 751-780, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:71:y:2017:i:s1:p:s85-s108_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ino .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.