Green Vote Fades Where Import Competition Scares People
New research by Valentina Bosetti (Department of Economics) and Italo Colantone (Department of Social and Political Sciences) suggests that Western policymakers wanting to make progress on climate action should address the distributional consequences of international trade. In a paper with Charlotte Bez (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna) and Maurizio Zanardi (University of Surrey), Professors Bosetti and Colantone investigate the economic determinants of green voting and attitudes in the US and Europe. They find that individuals who live in areas more exposed to international trade display lower support for environmentalist parties and more skeptical attitudes about climate change.