American Political Science Review

Table of Contents - February 2011 - Volume 105, Issue 01  

Research Article

Costly Jobs: Trade-related Layoffs, Government Compensation, and Voting in U.S. Elections

YOTAM MARGALITa1 c1

a1 Columbia University

Abstract

Does globalization's impact on the labor market affect how people vote? I address this question using a new dataset based on plant-level data that measures the impact of foreign competition on the U.S. workforce over an 8-year period. Analyzing change in the president's vote share, I find that voters were substantially more sensitive to the loss of local jobs when it resulted from foreign competition, particularly from offshoring, than to job losses caused by other factors. Yet, I also find that between 2000 and 2004, the anti-incumbent effect of trade-related job losses was smaller in areas where the government certified more of the harmed workers to receive special job training and income assistance. The findings have implications for understanding the impact of international economic integration on voting behavior, as well as for assessing the electoral effect of government programs designed to compensate the losers from globalization.

(Online publication March 17 2011)

Correspondence:

c1 Yotam Margalit is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Columbia University, 420 W. 118th Street, New York, NY 10027 (ym2297@columbia.edu).

Footnotes

For helpful comments and suggestions I thank Brian Burgoon, Jowei Chen, David Epstein, Robert Erikson, Judith Goldstein, Shigeo Hirano, Macartan Humphreys, Alex Kuo, David Laitin, Jeffrey Lax, Neil Malhotra, Pablo Pinto, Oren Rigbi, Doug Rivers, Ken Scheve, Robert Shapiro, Johannes Urpelainen, Yaniv Yedid-Levi, four anonymous referees and the APSR coeditors, as well as participants at the American Empirical Series at Stanford University and the American Politics Workshop at Columbia University. Special thanks are also due to Patrick Chang and Khan Shing for outstanding research assistance. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the 2008 meetings of the International Political Economy Society and at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Political Science Association.

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