Replication Data for: Rising Inequality as a Threat to the Liberal International Order

The rise of top-heavy inequality—earnings concentration within a very thin layer of elites—calls into question our understanding of the distributional effects of the Liberal International Order. Far more people lose from globalization, and fewer gain, than traditional economic models suggest. We review three modern trade theories (neo-HOSS, NNTT, and Economic Geography) that each arrive at the conclusion of top-heavy inequality by introducing some form of unit heterogeneity—an assumption that the actors we once treated as identical actually differ from one another in important ways. Heterogeneity allows the gains from globalization to concentrate within: a narrow segment of workers with superlative talents, extraordinarily productive firms, or heavily agglomerated cities. An analysis of European voting data show that shocks from trade and migration elicit populist opposition only where the top 1 percent have gained most. With few politically feasible alternatives to protectionism, most notably the failure of democracies to redistribute income, our analysis predicts a persistence of public support for anti-globalization parties, especially those on the right.