The Effect of Education on Support for International Trade: Evidence from Compulsory-Education Reforms

Omer Solodoch

International Organization, 2024, vol. 78, issue 4, 800-822

Abstract: Across countries and over time, support for economic globalization is strongest among individuals with the highest levels of education. Yet despite long-lasting debates on the sources of this correlation, reliable evidence that isolates the causal effect of education from the nonrandom selection of individuals into education is lacking. To address this fundamental issue, I exploit compulsory-schooling reforms that increased the minimum school-leaving age in eighteen countries. Employing a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, I find that the reform-induced added years of education substantially and durably increased support for trade liberalization. And using new data on the content of school curricula, I find that the effect of schooling largely stems from instilling tolerance and pluralism in citizens and reducing the perceived cultural threat of globalization. In contrast, there is little evidence that the effect of schooling reflects the distributive consequences of international trade, separating globalization winners and losers.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:intorg:v:78:y:2024:i:4:p:800-822_6

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Organization from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().