Political Ideology and Endogenous Trade Policy: An Empirical Investigation

Pushan Dutt, Devashish Mitra

NBER Working Paper No. 9239
Issued in September 2002
NBER Program(s):International Trade and Investment

In this paper, we empirically investigate 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 economies 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.

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w9239

Published:

• Dutt, Pushan and Devashish Mitra. "Endogenous Trade Policy Through Majority Voting: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of International Economics, October 2002, 58(1): 107-133
• Dutt, Pushan and Devashish Mitra. "Political Ideology and Endogenous Trade Policy: An Empirical Investigation." The Review of Economics and Statistics, February 2005, 87(1): 59-72. citation courtesy of

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