Industries, Occupations, and Trade Policy Preferences

The nature of one’s work, not just who one works for, is central to political and economic life. Yet models of trade policy preferences mostly ignore occupation, focusing exclusively on industries (perhaps because industries are the usual organizing dimension of economic policymaking). This article proposes new measures of how much risk trade imposes on different workers based on how diversified their occupation is across industries, thus considering both industry and occupation. Having a job specific to any sector appears to encourage protectionism, regardless of that sector’s comparative advantage, supporting the idea that public opinion may treat trade policy as insurance.