Individual Attitudes Towards Trade: Stolper-Samuelson Revisited

Using the 2007 wave of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, this paper finds statistically significant and economically large Stolper-Samuelson effects in individuals' preference formation towards trade policy. High-skilled individuals are substantially more pro-trade than low-skilled individuals in high-skilled labor abundant countries, and vice versa in a considerable share of low-skilled labor abundant countries. Our novel international survey data combine a number of desirable features which allow us to paint a more distinct and thus more convincing picture of the role of the Heckscher-Ohlin model in shaping free trade attitudes, relative to existing literature.