Nationalism and economic openness: The cross-country evidence

Abstract

Using cross-country data, we find little evidence that economic openness has an impact on the level of nationalism in countries. We use three waves of the World Values Survey from 1999 through 2014 combined with data on economic openness from the Penn World Tables. Across all three waves, we find no statistically significant relationship between economic openness and nationalism. However, there is evidence for a negative association between economic openness and nationalism from 2001 to 2007 and a positive association between 2007 and 2014. This corresponds to the rising nationalistic and anti-trade sentiment evident throughout the world despite the general trend of increasing economic openness.