{"title":"Deficit aversion: Mercantilist ideas and individual trade preferences","authors":"Jeremy Spater","doi":"10.1111/ecpo.12306","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>What factors affect trade preferences? This article focuses on current-account balances, which despite being de-emphasized by mainstream economic theory, play an outsized role in political rhetoric regarding the costs and benefits of free trade. This article shows that individual preferences over trade openness reflect the mercantilist belief that when a country is running a current-account deficit, trade reduces that country's aggregate employment prospects and diminishes its status on the world stage. This article shows that current-account balances are an important driver of individual trade preferences. The theory's predictions are borne out by hierarchical analysis of cross-national observational survey data, and further supported by the results of an original survey priming experiment in the United States. These results contribute to a growing literature emphasizing the effect of macroeconomic factors on preferences.</p>","PeriodicalId":1,"journal":{"name":"Accounts of Chemical Research","volume":"36 3","pages":"1763-1817"},"PeriodicalIF":16.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecpo.12306","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Accounts of Chemical Research","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecpo.12306","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CHEMISTRY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
What factors affect trade preferences? This article focuses on current-account balances, which despite being de-emphasized by mainstream economic theory, play an outsized role in political rhetoric regarding the costs and benefits of free trade. This article shows that individual preferences over trade openness reflect the mercantilist belief that when a country is running a current-account deficit, trade reduces that country's aggregate employment prospects and diminishes its status on the world stage. This article shows that current-account balances are an important driver of individual trade preferences. The theory's predictions are borne out by hierarchical analysis of cross-national observational survey data, and further supported by the results of an original survey priming experiment in the United States. These results contribute to a growing literature emphasizing the effect of macroeconomic factors on preferences.
期刊介绍：
Accounts of Chemical Research presents short, concise and critical articles offering easy-to-read overviews of basic research and applications in all areas of chemistry and biochemistry. These short reviews focus on research from the author’s own laboratory and are designed to teach the reader about a research project. In addition, Accounts of Chemical Research publishes commentaries that give an informed opinion on a current research problem. Special Issues online are devoted to a single topic of unusual activity and significance.
Accounts of Chemical Research replaces the traditional article abstract with an article "Conspectus." These entries synopsize the research affording the reader a closer look at the content and significance of an article. Through this provision of a more detailed description of the article contents, the Conspectus enhances the article's discoverability by search engines and the exposure for the research.
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