Our Publications
These publications present concise summaries of affiliated faculty’s recently published research, with a particular focus on globalization or shared prosperity.
“Trade as Villain: Belief in the American Dream and Declining Support for Globalization” Cameron Ballard-Rosa, Judith Goldstein and Nita Rudra – Journal of Politics (2024)
Description: We argue that this politicization reflects an interaction between elite rhetoric on unfair trade practices and American meritocratic values. Individuals who are most tied to the myth of the classic American Dream are the most likely to respond to a frame blaming unfair trade for America’s economic problems, and this contributes to rising antiglobalization sentiment.
Deep trade agreements and international migration: the role of visa provisions A Levelu, AM Mayda, G Orefice – Journal of Economic Geography, 2024
Description: An increasing number of regional trade agreements contains provisions that ease access to visas among member countries, which reduces the administrative cost of crossing the border. This article shows that the effectiveness of visa provisions in regional trade agreements reduces with the anti-immigration sentiment of voters in the destination.
Political Costs of Trade War Tariffs ED Mansfield, O Solodoch – The Journal of Politics, 2024
Description: This study analyze whether—and, if so, how—Americans reacted to the escalation of the trade war between the United States and China in June 2018. This article’s findings indicate that trade wars can be politically costly for incumbent politicians, even among voters who are not directly affected by retaliatory tariffs.
Do Exchange Rates Influence Voting? Evidence from Elections and Survey Experiments in Democracies DP Quinn, T Sattler, S Weymouth – International Organization, 2023
Description: A moderately overvalued currency enhances consumers’ purchasing power, yet extreme overvaluation threatens exports and economic growth. We therefore expect exchange rates to have a conditional effect on elections: when a currency is undervalued, voters will punish incumbents for further depreciations; yet when it is highly overvalued, they may reward incumbents for depreciation. Democratic governments have electoral incentives to avoid using undervalued currencies as a means of shielding workers from import competition.
Wealthy Americans and redistribution: The role of fairness preferences A Cohn, LJ Jessen, M Klašnja, P Smeets – Journal of Public Economics, 2023
Description: This examine the attitudes of the wealthy towards government redistribution using a large and diverse sample of individuals from the top 5% of the income and wealth distribution in the U.S., as well as the remaining 95%. Three results stand out: (1) wealthy Americans have distinct fairness preferences, with a greater willingness to accept inequalities relative to the general public, (2) individuals who self-report having experienced upward social mobility and became first-generation wealthy are particularly accepting of inequality, while those born into wealth have fairness preferences similar to the general population; (3) the disparity in fairness preferences between the rich and the general public is predictive of greater opposition to redistribution among the wealthy, resulting in more conservative voting behavior.
Digital Globalization: Politics, Policy, and a Governance Paradox S Weymouth – Elements in International Relations, 2023
Description: Innovations in technology and business propel a new, digitally-driven phase of globalization defined by the expansion of cross-border information flows that is provoking political conflict and policy discord. This study: 1) explains the new sources of political division stemming from digital globalization; 2) documents policy barriers to digital trade; 3) presents a framework to explain digital trade barriers across countries; and 4) assesses the prospects for international cooperation on digital governance, which requires countries move beyond coordinated liberalization and toward coordinated regulation.
Public responses to foreign protectionism: Evidence from the US-China trade war DA Steinberg, Y Tan – The Review of International Organizations, 2023
Description: America’s recent turn towards protectionism has raised concerns over the future viability of the liberal international trading system. We fielded three original survey experiments in the country most affected by US protectionism: China. First, we find consistent evidence that US protectionism reduces support for trade among Chinese citizens. This study examines how and why public attitudes towards international trade change when protectionist measures from abroad target one’s country.
“Segregated Economies in an Integrated World: The Gendered Consequences of Exchange Rate Movements in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.” Simmons, Joel W. – International Organization, 2023
Description: I argue that exchange rates are an underappreciated explanation for the significant variation in the extent of female labor force participation in developing countries. Consequently, when an overvalued exchange rate increases export prices, it reduces commensurately the demand for female labor. This causes some women to drop out of the labor force.
Nationalism, populism, and trade agreements ED Mansfield, JCW Pevehouse – International Studies Review, 2022
Description: In this paper, we argue that nationalism and populism are likely to discourage trade liberalization in democratic states, but that these forces will have little influence on trade policy in non-democracies. To test this argument, we focus on state involvement in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Democracies with nationalist or populist governments are especially reluctant to join PTAs, but neither nationalism nor populism systematically influences whether non-democracies enter PTAs.
“Globalization and nationalism: contending forces in world politics.” Niccolò W Bonifai, Nita Rudra, Carew Boulding, Samantha L Moya – International Studies Review, 2022
Description: Globalization is facing widespread condemnation at a time when worldwide crises ranging from climate change to pandemic policy increasingly demand a coordinated response. We aim to broaden the debate on the causes and consequences of rising populism and nationalism and offer unique perspectives on how and why the current international order struggles to address the many global challenges in need of large-scale cooperative solutions.
The globalization backlash: Exploring new perspectives ED Mansfield, HV Milner, N Rudra – Comparative political studies, 2021
Description: Rising popular discontent with globalization in Europe and the United States has occurred alongside increasing support for extreme right-wing parties, protectionism, and anti-immigrant views. The studies in this special issue provide fresh insights into the economic factors contributing to the backlash while also addressing how they might interact with cultural forces. It concludes with a discussion of why the globalization backlash has not diffused widely to the developing world.
Legitimacy challenges to the liberal world order: Evidence from United Nations speeches, 1970–2018 A Kentikelenis, E Voeten – The Review of International Organizations, 2021
Description: This article puts these challenges in historical context through a systematic analysis of rhetorical challenges towards both the liberal international order order per se and specific global economic institutions. An analysis of the historical evolution of criticisms to global economic institutions reveals a move away from the Cold War insider-outsider conflict towards insider contestation. Finally, we demonstrate consistency between the public policy positions leaders announce in UN General Assembly General Debate speeches and their government positions on consequential reform debates on debt relief.
Connecting the countryside via e-commerce: evidence from China V Couture, B Faber, Y Gu, L Liu – American Economic Review: Insights, 2021
Description: This paper estimates the impact of the first nationwide e-commerce expansion program on rural households. In contrast to existing case studies, we find little evidence for income gains to rural producers and workers. Instead, the gains are driven by a reduction in cost of living for a minority of rural households that tend to be younger, richer, and in more remote markets.
The political economy of protection in GVCs: Evidence from Chinese micro data RD Ludema, AM Mayda, Z Yu, M Yu – Journal of International Economics, 2021
Description: This paper explores the political economy of import protection in a setting where imports may contain a country’s own domestic value added (DVA) via domestically-produced inputs that get exported and used in foreign downstream production. Empirically, we examine detailed discriminatory trade policies of 23 countries toward China and use Chinese transaction-level processing trade data to construct a measure of DVA. Tariffs on products containing inputs that are neither customized nor politically organized appear to be unaffected by the DVA share.
Gone for good: Deindustrialization, white voter backlash, and US presidential voting L Baccini, S Weymouth – American Political Science Review, 2021
Description: Globalization and automation have contributed to deindustrialization and the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs, yielding important electoral implications across advanced democracies. We argue that deindustrialization threatens dominant group status, leading some white voters in affected localities to favor candidates they believe will address economic distress and defend racial hierarchy. Examining three US presidential elections, we find white voters were more likely to vote for Republican challengers where manufacturing layoffs were high, whereas Black voters in hard-hit localities were more likely to vote for Democrats.
Trading arguments: opinion updating in the context of international trade agreements G Spilker, Q Nguyen, T Bernauer – International Studies Quarterly, 2020
Description: This article examines how individuals’ prior opinion influences the way they process new information through the context of the negotiations on the potentially largest regional trade agreement in history: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). We argue that individuals’ existing priors about how they generally think about economic openness interact with new information to inform their opinion about the specific policy proposal at hand. Our experimental results show that while prior opinion constrains opinion updating to some degree, overall, citizens update their existing beliefs in line with new information.
“Austerity, Economic Vulnerability, and Populism.” Baccini, Leonardo and Thomas Sattler. Forthcoming – American Journal of Political Science. Online First.
Description: We examine the political effects of these adjustments in Europe since the 1990s using both district-level election outcomes and individual-level voting data. We identify economically vulnerable regions as those with a high share of low-skilled workers, workers in manufacturing and in jobs with a high routine-task intensity. The analysis of district-level elections demonstrates that austerity increases support for populist parties in economically vulnerable regions, but has little effect in less vulnerable regions.
“Does Austerity Cause Polarization?” Hübscher, Evelyne, Thomas Sattler and Markus Wagner. 2023 – British Journal of Political Science 53(4): 1170-1188.
Description: In this article, we show that these decisions have consequences for political polarization. Our macro-level analysis of 166 elections since 1980 finds that austerity measures increase both electoral abstention and votes for non-mainstream parties, thereby boosting party system polarization. A detailed analysis of selected austerity episodes also shows that new, small and radical parties benefit most from austerity policies. Austerity is a substantial cause of political polarization and hence political instability in industrialized democracies.
“Winners And Losers In International Trade: The Effects On US Presidential Voting.” J. Bradford Jensen, Dennis P. Quinn And Stephen Weymouth. International Organization, 71, 3 (2017): 423-457. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818317000194.
Description: We explore the electoral implications of the increasing tradability of services and the large US surplus in services trade. Our paper builds on prior work showing that job insecurity from import competition in manufacturing diminishes political support for incumbents. Incumbent parties are particularly vulnerable to losing votes in swing states with many low-skilled manufacturing workers. We also find an Electoral College incentive to protect the manufacturing sector and to oppose trade agreements.