Who supports Free Trade in Latin America?
Author InfoEugene Beauliue (Univeristy of Calgary & International Trade Canada) Ravi Yatawara (University of Delaware) Wei Guo Wang (University of Calgary) Abstract This paper examines individual trade policy preferences across the 17 countries in Latin America. The focus is on whether skilled or unskilled workers are more likely to support liberalized trade and on whether country characteristics, such as factor endowments, alter the preferences of skilled and unskilled workers. Based on the standard Heckscher-Ohlin model and the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, wage inequality in developing countries will decrease under free trade and unskilled workers will benefit. We find that on average skilled workers are more likely than unskilled workers to support free trade in Latin American countries. Separate country regressions reveal that this pattern is only statistically significant in 8 out of 17 Latin American countries. However, there are no countries in our sample in which unskilled worker
