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Milner, to undertake more reliable cross-national research on all of these aspects.
The basic question is clear: are the observed patterns well predicted by the theories,
and does the accuracy depend, in the way argued, on country, factor, and industry
characteristics? Do positions (e.g. on trade and migration) correlate with one another
as predicted?
7 Conclusion
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I take for granted that the backdrop to all of this is growing global economic integration.
But it may also be worth noting that the pace of that integration has varied
greatly, even in recent years, and that the pace of integration has varied significantly
across countries. The great majority of the developed economies have been open
for decades, but a few have opened more recently and with astonishing rapidity:
Canada, New Zealand. In the developing world, even more countries have opened,
recently and more rapidly: China and the former Soviet-bloc countries of course,
but even more recently Mexico and India. Have the distributional conflicts and the
political alignments, coalitions, and compensation schemes in such cases accorded
with theoretical predictions, or do they call them into question? (One issue that
has attracted most attention is the seeming failure of rapid opening to diminish
inequality in developing countries—for the HO model, as already noted, certainly
predicts exactly such a diminution in inequality.)
Empirical research will succeed in this area to the extent that it is informed by, and
sheds light on, the well-developed theories of IPE. Precisely because our theories of
the distributional consequences are so good, and so linked to specific assumptions
about things like technology, economies of scale, and factor specificity, well-designed
enquiries can rapidly advance (and in many cases have rapidly advanced) our overall
understanding of trade’s political effects.
References
Burgoon, B.,andHiscox, M.J.2004. The mysterious case of female protectionism: gender
bias in attitudes toward international trade. Available at: www.people.fas.harvard.edu/
∼hiscox/BurgoonHiscoxFemaleProtectionism.pdf.
Davis,D.R.,andWeinstein, D.E.2005. Technological superiority and the losses from
migration. Available at: www.international.ucla.edu/cms/files/DavisMigrationDraft.pdf.
Estevez-Abe, M.,Iversen, T.,andSoskice, D.2001. Social protection and the formation of
skills: a reinterpretation of the welfare state. Ch. 4 in Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional
Foundations of Comparative Advantage, ed. P. A. Hall and D. Soskice. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Grossman, G.M.,andHelpman, E.2004. A protectionist bias in majoritarian politics.
Available at: www.princeton.edu/∼grossman/protectionistbias120804gg.pdf.