The trade (policy) discourse in top economics journals

Matthias Aistleitner and Stephan Puehringer ()
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Stephan Puehringer: Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Stephan Pühringer

No 97, ICAE Working Papers from Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy

Abstract: In the aftermath of recent populist upheavals in Europe, nationalist economic policies challenge the overly positive view on economic integration and the reduction of trade barriers established by standard economic theory. For quite a long time the great majority of economists supported trade liberalization policies, at least those actively engaged in policy advice or public debates. In this paper, we examine the elite economics discourse on trade policies during the last 20 years regarding specific characteristics of authors, affiliations, citation patterns, the overall attitude towards trade, as well as the methodological approach applied in these papers. Our analysis yields the following results: First, the hierarchical structure of economics also manifests in the debate about trade. Second, while we found some indications of a shift towards more empirically oriented work, quite often empirical data is solely used to calibrate models rather than to challenge potentially biased theoretical assumptions. Third, top economic discourses on trade are predominantly characterised by a normative bias in favour of tradeliberalization-policies. Forth, we found that other-than-economic impacts and implications of trade policies (political, social and cultural as well as environmental issues) to a great extent either remain unmentioned or are rationalised by means of pure economic criteria.

Keywords: trade evaluation; trade policies; empirical turn; social studies of economics; bibliometric analysis; top economic journals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2019-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme, nep-hpe, nep-int, nep-pke and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://www.jku.at/fileadmin/gruppen/108/ICAE_Working_Papers/wp97.pdf Revised version, 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Trade (Policy) Discourse in Top Economics Journals (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ico:wpaper:97

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