(iPoster) Has There Been a Failure to Compensate the Losers from Free Trade?

• In Event: Poster Session: New Directions in International Political Economy

Abstract

There is evidence that exposure to international economic competition, like through free trade, causes an increase in support for far-right populist parties. Given that economic theory suggests that compensation mitigates this relationship by reducing economic insecurity, there is renewed interest in understanding how much compensation has occurred and what its effects have been. However, a lack of consensus on how to measure compensation has made it difficult to learn about it's effects, with researchers often using measures that are difficult to compare across contexts and at times only loosely related to the theoretical concept of compensation. I attempt to contribute to our ability to learn about compensation by clarifying how several popular measures relate to the theoretical concept of compensation and to one another. I also compare each measure to the estimated amount of compensation needed to determine which measure best corresponds to actual compensation and to evaluate the common claim that there is a lack of compensation in developed democracies.

Author

• Unregistered Participant