Like it or Not? How the Economic and Institutional Environment Shapes Individual Attitudes towards Multinational Enterprises

Abstract

The integration of goods and factor markets has affected the lives of individuals all over the world. While some agents have reaped enormous benefits from this process, others have lost in terms of income and welfare. It is usually argued that individuals are aware of the distributional effects of globalization, and that this knowledge shapes their preferences over various policy issues such as protection, financial market regulation etc. In this chapter, we use a large surveybased data set to explore whether this conjecture is correct when it comes to individuals’ attitudes towards multinational enterprises (MNEs).