← Search

Political Ideology and Endogenous Trade Policy: An Empirical Investigation

Pushan Dutt1; Devashish Mitra2

1 University of Alberta · 2 Syracuse University

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2005

In this paper, we investigate empirically how government ideology affects trade policy. The prediction of a partisan, ideology-based model (within a two-sector, two-factor Heckscher-Ohlin framework) is that left-wing governments will adopt more protectionist trade policies in capital-rich countries, but adopt more pro-trade policies in labor-rich countries, than right-wing ones. The data strongly support this prediction in a very robust fashion. There is some evidence that this relationship may hold better in democracies than in dictatorships, though the magnitude of the partisan effect seems stronger in dictatorships.

DOI
10.1162/0034653053327621
Volume
87 (1)
Pages
59-72
Language
en
Export
BibTeX
Sources
openalex crossref