Does Economic Education Make a Difference in Congress? How Economics Majors Vote on Trade

Abstract

The author of this article expands the background theory of voting to incorporate the undergraduate majors of members of Congress. Examining nine votes on trade across the 109th and 110th Congresses reveals that economics majors are the only category of college major to vote in favor of free trade in a predictable way. Controls for a variety of factors including ideology, race, campaign contributions, and the inclusion of votes specifically on Cuba fail to diminish the effect. While economics majors are more likely to take a free trade position, not every vote that presupposes a free trade outcome is supported by economics majors. On the issue of sugar subsidies, being an economics major does not influence the direction of a congressional member's vote.

Keywords:

• economic education
• trade policy
• voting

JEL codes:

• A11
• A12
• D72

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Bill Wood, Jason Farone, and David Kreutzer for helpful comments in the compilation of this work.

Notes

1. Fuller, Alston, and Vaughan (1995) offered the explanation that a slight rewording of the question and an increase in the heightened perception of out-sourcing led to the decline.

2. All versions of the model were run with and without the Cuba votes. Each version was also run dropping Cuba votes one at a time. The results are essentially the same with only minor variations in the size of the coefficient. The regressions were also run for each individual vote. Two of the three Cuba votes—vote 6 on travel and vote 8 on farm exports—uphold the results from the larger sample, while vote 7 on the travel and trade ban does not. These results are available upon request.

3. Specifications of the model were run using party, as opposed to ideology, with no impact on the outcomes. Other versions were run combining party and ideology. While the basic conclusions were in no way affected in using both party and ideology in a regression, despite such use in some studies (Baldwin and Magee 1998; Hasnat and Callahan 2004; Bohara et al. 2005; Abetti 2008), it poses multicollinearity concerns. All versions of the model are available from the author upon request.

4. There is a potential endogeneity problem using the ADA score or the adjusted ADA score here because two of the trade votes analyzed in this article are among the votes included in compiling the score. The 2006 ADA score uses the PNTR with Vietnam vote, and the 2007 ADA score includes the Peru Free Trade Agreement. The regressions were run with and without these two votes, and while the correctly predicted percent falls slightly, the magnitude of the economics major coefficient is not appreciably different between the two circumstances. The full slate of votes is reported here, but the complete set of results is available from the author upon request.

5. In some versions of the model, labor PAC money as a percentage of overall contributions was included. The coefficient held the predicted negative sign; however, due to multicollinearity concerns, this variable was not included in the final set of reported regressions.

6. Using union membership rather than those represented by unions does not change the results of the model.