Pre-Registration for "The Compensation Hypothesis and Immigration Policy Attitudes: More than Preaching to the Choir?"

The compensation hypothesis argues that, especially in democracies, economic openness requires that the state provide programs to compensate those in society who lose from trade and immigration. Without such compensation programs, political support for economic openness may erode, and democratic governments may become unable to sustain open trade and immigration policies. At the national level, support for the compensation hypothesis comes from the cross-country evidence showing the trade openness is positively correlated with government spending (e.g., Cameron 1978, Rodrik 1998). At the individual-level, support comes from the survey evidence showing that citizens in countries with more compensation programs report as being more favorable to free trade (Hays, Ehrlich, and Peinhardt 2005). But many questions remain. Do compensation programs make citizens more favorable towards immigration, a dimension of economic globalization where it may be harder to shift attitudes in a positive direction? Going further in this issue-area, do compensation programs influence the attitudes of less skilled citizens, or those most vulnerable to economic openness in the advanced industrial democracies? Or do these compensation programs only make more skilled citizens more favorable towards immigration, thus increasing the attitude difference between less and more skilled citizens? Indeed, it is also possible that compensation programs may increase the attitude difference between less and more skilled citizens by making less skilled citizens less favorable towards immigration because of negative associations with welfare and negative associations with racial/ethnic minorities who may also be served by these welfare/compensation programs.