Soft power and exporters behavior in international trade

Laurent Didier

Economics Bulletin, 2019, vol. 39, issue 4, 2595-2614

Abstract: Soft power is a political and economical tool in international relations characterising the competitiveness of a country, its integrity and its attractiveness. The country image helps to promote exchanges and international business through people's perception. These political and economic influence have outcomes by creating positive impressions among foreign countries. I investigate the unexplored relationship between soft power and exporters behavior in international trade. I mainly use two proxies with the BBC-GlobeScan and Pew surveys about people's opinion on exporter countries. I employ a theory-based and robust structural gravity model with aggregate and disaggregated trade data for micro characteristics of exporters. I find evidence that soft power has significant effects on exporting firms behaviors, essentially for some developping countries at the aggregate level of trade. The results are less significant at the disaggregated level.

Keywords: soft power; firms; trade; international relations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-11-16
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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