¿Qué aspectos motivan las opiniones de los ciudadanos de la Unión Europea acerca de la inmigración y el libre-comercio? ¿Ideología, intereses personales y/ o características nacionales?

Given the current context of the European Union (EU), there are pressures to adopt restrictive policies on international trade and immigration. As these policies arise as the response of policy makers to individual’s preferences; this paper analyzes the factors that shape them. The dataset is the survey carried out in 2003 by the International Social Survey Program. The estimated models show that the characteristics that most influence the formation of these preferences are gender, education, income, religiosity, self-employment and nationalism. In line with the Ricardo-Viner model, it is found that people employed in sectors with comparative advantage support free trade and those employed in non-tradable sectors show negative attitudes towards immigrants. In line with the Hecksher-Ohlin model and in both cases, education generates more favorable attitudes. In addition, individuals are aware of the re-distributive effects of free trade and in line with the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, less educated workers who lives in countries relatively abundant in capital show unfavorable attitudes and vice versa.