Social Science Statistics Blog

Right. Maybe 'uneducated' people simply haven't been brainwashed into thinking that 'free trade' is actually trade liberalization when really it is a code word for the use of international law to force open third world markets to highly subsidized products from the industrialized countries' multinational corporations (WTO, NAFTA). 'Uneducatated' i.e., poor people (small farmers, workers) are the ones who take it in the chin, while the rich get richer. Thus their 'protectionist' attitudes: its self defense. It is a rational response rather than a lack of 'education'.

While the idea of education affecting trade policy preferences through exposure to economic ideas is interesting, I wonder whether your empirical analyses actually support the conclusion. You examine samples of both populations that are employed and populations that are not employed (with samples of all unemployed and simply retired persons) and find that education has a similar effect with regard to all groups. Perhaps there is another explanation to it not related specifically to economic education. What if those who are unemployed are simply carrying old preferences about trade from the time they were employed. For example, a worker in the US who opposed trade because of wage effects would not necessarily become pro-trade overnight due to retirement. He would likely continue to oppose trade because trade had hurt him when he was still working. Similarly, somebody who is currently unemployed would not necessarily become pro-trade when his area of employment is likely to be as a scarce factor. The only group that would probably be affected by economic ideas independent of past employment would be students. Thus, is it possible that the results you find are simply reflections of attitudes carried over from when the individual was previously employed, attitudes that may have been informed by S-S?

Hi Patrick,

thanks a lot for your comment. We also thought about this interpretation of our results (we labeled it the "stickiness" explanation). We are somewhat doubtful of this argument, but it would be interesting to further explore it.

The crux is that if the argument is that trade preferences simply remain sticky once one retires, this would require a theory about why people do not update their believes (although they did so in the past when they became employed). So why would people suddenly fool themselves? For somebody being laid off this argument seems even less plausible.

In any case, these issues are a very long way from the arguments that have been made in the literature about preferences being shaped by S-S dynamics (which are our main concern in the paper). We think that re. the economics, the real action is with industry-specific effects on attitudes towards trade and globalization. But these have not been tested properly given the data-constrains.

Jens

Hi Jens,

Thank you for your reply. I think it would be interesting to flush out the "stickiness" explanation more given that it seems that this paper was meant to "debunk" S-S by offering the economic education argument as an alternative hypothesis for the education/trade preferences correlation.

Some possible reasons why people would suddenly "fool" themselves after employment:

1) Individuals just beginning to enter the work force may not have fully formed their opinions on issues yet. They form opinions mostly based on what they learn in school whereas those who have been in the workforce will base their opinions on "real-life" issues such as wages. Once they begin to work for a while, economic conditions will trump whatever they learned in school. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to expect retirees to have more hardened opinions on free trade.

2) Retirees may also have very little sensitivity toward the benefits of free trade. Even as a student who has been exposed to a lot of economic education, I still have to constantly remind myself of the price benefits of free trade whereas it is not difficult to be exposed to negative perceptions of free trade.

3) Retirees may have some type of emotional attachment to their previous line of work, which coupled with a lack of sensitivity to trade benefits would allow them to "fool" themselves. I would assume somebody who has been laid off would probably be even more sensitive to either S-S or R-V effects and less sensitive to purely economic education effects.

Another interesting question would be how much does economic education really play in opinion formation, especially among retirees who are probably 40-50 years removed from any formal schooling?

I realize that data limitations would probably prevent you from doing more with regard to the "stickiness" explanation, which is unfortunate given the prominence of economic education as an alternative explanation to S-S with regard to education and trade preferences.

I would agree with Patrick, and suggest Jens reads up on the Socialization thesis, a fairly well accepted explanation for voting preferences. The "stickness" of people's opinions, particularly political, is usually rooted in their early means of socialization. This often includes parents, friends, school, and membership in organizations (boy scouts, church, etc.). These opinions tend to trump "class voting": a rising entrepeneur from a working class family may well vote as her parents did, because she wants others who came from her backgound to have the same or better opportunities that/than she did. Perhaps she will face a dilemma between benefiting her current position and voting as she was socialized, but it seems simplistic to call this "fooling oneself". Further, the socialization of one's employment may also have a powerful and lasting effect, even through retirement.

In general, class voting has been on the decline, suggesting that political opinions in general may not be purely based on absolute self-interest. I won't go so far as to support post-materialism as a whole, but I do think the socialization thesis is especially compelling. Modelling opinions using an ecnomic "stickiness" term seems somewhat misplaced given the context. Sociologists do not, in my experience, model the "elasticity of opinion".