Abstract:

Across countries and over time, support for economic globalization is highest among individuals with the highest levels of education. Yet despite long-lasting debates about the sources of this correlation, reliable evidence that isolates the causal effect of education from the nonrandom selection of individuals into education is lacking. To address this fundamental issue, I exploit compulsory schooling reforms that increased the minimum school leaving age in eighteen countries. Employing a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, I find that the reform-induced added years of education substantially and durably increased support for trade liberalization. Using new data on the content of school curricula, I find that the effect of schooling largely stems from instilling tolerance and pluralism in citizens and reducing perceived cultural threat from globalization. In contrast, there is little evidence that the effect of schooling reflects the distributive consequences of international trade separating globalization winners and losers.