Tyler Cowen is on a roll
Astute readers of danieldrezner.com may have detected a slight drop-off in posting productivity. This is due to a plethora of reasons, some of which will become clear in due course. However, Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution has been producing a steady stream of fascinating posts. There’s one on the surprisingly high rate of return for ...
Astute readers of danieldrezner.com may have detected a slight drop-off in posting productivity. This is due to a plethora of reasons, some of which will become clear in due course. However, Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution has been producing a steady stream of fascinating posts. There's one on the surprisingly high rate of return for Senator's stock portfolios, one on the economics of corporate downsizing [What's that?--ed. That's what everyone was freaking out about ten years ago during the jobless recovery. Go back and replace the word "downsizing" with "outsourcing" and "India" with "Japan" and the debate would look awfully familiar], and a review of recent outsourcing articles. However, this post from earlier in the week made my jaw drop. It links to a USA Today story on changes in public opinion on globalization. The highlights:
Astute readers of danieldrezner.com may have detected a slight drop-off in posting productivity. This is due to a plethora of reasons, some of which will become clear in due course. However, Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution has been producing a steady stream of fascinating posts. There’s one on the surprisingly high rate of return for Senator’s stock portfolios, one on the economics of corporate downsizing [What’s that?–ed. That’s what everyone was freaking out about ten years ago during the jobless recovery. Go back and replace the word “downsizing” with “outsourcing” and “India” with “Japan” and the debate would look awfully familiar], and a review of recent outsourcing articles. However, this post from earlier in the week made my jaw drop. It links to a USA Today story on changes in public opinion on globalization. The highlights:
High-income Americans have lost much of their enthusiasm for free trade as they perceive their own jobs threatened by white-collar workers in China, India and other countries, according to data from a survey of views on trade. The survey by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) is one of the most comprehensive U.S. polls on trade issues. It found that support for free trade fell in most income groups from 1999 to 2004 but dropped most rapidly among high-income respondents — the group that has registered the strongest support for free trade. ”Free trade” means the removal of barriers such as tariffs that restrict international trade. The poll shows that among Americans making more than $100,000 a year, support for actively promoting more free trade collapsed from 57% to less than half that, 28%. There were smaller drops, averaging less than 7 percentage points, in income brackets below $70,000, where support for free trade was already weaker. The same poll found that the share of Americans making more than $100,000 who want the push toward free trade slowed or stopped altogether nearly doubled from 17% to 33%. (emphasis added)
Just three years ago, Kenneth Scheve and Matthew Slaughter argued in Globalization and the Perceptions of American Workers that public support for globalization was strongly and positively correlated with education and income. That finding still holds, but the increasing hostility to an open economy has flattened out the relationship considerably. [Why did this story make your jaw drop? Surely you’re not surprised that protectionist sentiments increase during an economic downturn?–ed. What’s surprising is not the trend but the magnitude of the effect at the upper end of the income distribution. This could be one clue as to why John Edwards did so well with affluent voters in Wisconsin even though his protectionist rhetoric seemed tailored towards lower-income voters.]
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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