Agricultural Comparative Advantage and Legislators’ Support for Trade Agreements

Francesco Amodio, Leonardo Baccini, Giorgio Chiovelli and Michele Di Maio

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Does comparative advantage explain legislators’ support for trade liberalization? We use data on potential crop yields as determined by weather and soil characteristics to derive a new, plausibly exogenous measure of comparative advantage in agriculture for each district in the US. Evidence shows that comparative advantage in agriculture predicts how legislators vote on the ratification of preferential trade agreements in Congress. We show that legislators in districts with high agricultural comparative advantage are more likely to mention that trade agreements are good for agriculture in House floor debates preceding roll-call votes on their ratifications. Individuals living in the same districts are also more likely to support free trade. Our analysis and results contribute to the literature on the political economy of trade and its distributional consequences, and to our understanding of the economic determinants of legislators voting decisions.

Keywords: Comparative Advantage; Trade Liberalization; Politicians; US (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F14 Q17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-07-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cdm, nep-int and nep-pol
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Related works:
Working Paper: Agricultural Comparative Advantage andLegislators' Support for Trade Agreements (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:102727

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