Exploring the trade narrative in top economics journals

In the aftermath of recent populist upheavals in Europe, the U.S., the UK and other areas around the world, nationalist economic policies challenge the overly positive view on economic integration and the reduction of trade barriers established by standard economic theory. For quite a long time the great majority of economists supported trade liberalization policies, at least those, who were actively engaged in policy advice or public debates. Yet it was hardly investigated whether this general support emerges from a consensus view among economists on this issue or whether only a partisan interpretation of economic expertise is used to serve a distinct political purpose. Against this background, in this paper we examine the elite economics discourse on trade and trade policies by applying a multilevel mixedmethod approach. In doing so we combine quantitative methods with a discourse analytical approach in order to examine dominant narratives and imaginaries present in high impact papers dealing with trade, globalization and related policy issues. Our analysis yields the following results: First, the hierarchical structure of economics is also present in the economic debate on trade. Second, the top economic discourse on trade is predominantly characterized by a normative bias in favor of trade liberalization policies leading to a systematically underestimation of negative effects of free trade policies. Third, we found that other-thaneconomic impacts and implications (political, social and cultural as well as environmental issues) of trade policies either remain unmentioned or are rationalized by means of pure economic criteria. To sum up, we conclude that the narrow perspective present in top economics discourse on trade prevents a more comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted gains and challenges related to the issue of international integration.