Interests, Norms, and Trade Preferences: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

• In Event: Poster Session: Political Economy

Abstract

Which factors drive public support for economic globalization and integration? The study of international political economy (Naoi &Kume 2015; Jamal &Milner 2019) has been walking around such a central dispute between economic self-interest (pocketbook or beyond) and norm (democracy, human rights, and security). We address the question by using an original survey experiment in Germany and Italy on trade policy preferences and European integration.
The paper investigates whether providing information about the benefits of free trade and the closer economic relationship with China induces respondents to change their preferences for trade and the EU. Because the scope of the EU goes beyond economic integration, the study can contribute to the unfolding of complicated mechanisms of preference formation under the changing phase of postwar embedded liberalism.
The analysis reveals that (1) at the national level, economic security both for individual and country situations affects the attitudes for international trade and European integration; in Germany, a strong economy leads people to stick to pre-existing economic self-interests, wheres in Italy, a troubled economy induces economically disadvantaged people to change their preferences after the treatment. (2) When going into the details, education is one of the key factors to drive preference formation; the more educated people are, the more firmly they maintain pre-treatment attitudes. (3) The attitudes for approaching China suggest that norms can affect preferences for trade and the EU beyond economic self-interests: This is especially true for women, which would show us the need for gendering the study of trade policy.

Author

• Takeshi Ito, The University of Tokyo