Date: 2024
Type: Working Paper
Trade shocks and relative consumption : why the European middle class is turning (far) right
EUI, RSC, Working Paper, 2024/39
MARZINOTTO, Benedicta, Trade shocks and relative consumption : why the European middle class is turning (far) right, EUI, RSC, Working Paper, 2024/39 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/77274
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
This paper relates far-right political preferences to changes in relative consumption stemming from trade exposure to low-quality producers such as China. The availability of more affordable varieties benefits the poor, while low-to-middle income groups stand to lose from such import shocks. Relative consumption deprivation awakens their perception of losing out relative to other once marginalised groups in the same society. Resentment for status loss explains the recent rightward drift in politics that is then channelled into support for the far-right especially during the main part of the China shock from 2000 to 2006. I empirically explore this hypothesis by relating measures of relative consumption deprivation to survey-based data from the European Social Survey (ESS) on a sample of 18 European countries over 2002- 2014.
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/77274
ISSN: 1028-3625
Series/Number: EUI; RSC; Working Paper; 2024/39
Publisher: European University Institute