Adam Dean
Biographic Data
| ID | 3877619 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adam Dean |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adam |
| FAMILY NAME | Dean |
| SIGNATURE | DEAN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | George Washington University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0940-9588 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Opening markets, one threat at a time
Since the 1980s, the United States has unilaterally pressured many developing countries to open their markets to American exports. Despite such pressure coinciding with trade liberalization around the world, prior research largely concludes that US pressure was ineffective. This paper challenges this conventional wisdom by mitigating selection bias in previous studies, which focused on late-stage forms of pressure such as Section 301 investigatio…
Free Trade, Repressed Workers
Arresting the Opposition
At the turn of the twenty-first century, why did country after country in the developing world open their economies to the global market? This paper argues that increases in democracy were more likely to lead to trade liberalization when governments violated workers’ basic rights to act collectively. Democracy empowered pro-trade domestic groups and therefore had the potential to lead to trade liberalization, but respect for labor rights empowere…
Authors’ Response
It is a special honor to publish our work alongside rigorous critiques from Dorothy Sue Cobble, Kristoffer Smemo, Eric Schickler, and Devin Caughey. We are grateful for the opportunity to debate our research in the pages of Labor with such an esteemed and interdisciplinary group of labor historians and political scientists. In this memo we will restate our argument, address three common concerns raised by the commentators, respond to specific que…
Rewarded by Friends and Punished by Enemies
The Wagner Act, passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress in 1935, provided unprecedented federal protections for American labor unions. The Taft-Hartley Act, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress just twelve years later, effectively rolled back significant parts of Wagner. Previous research on Taft-Hartley identifies three factors that led to this anti-labor backlash. First, the American public was repulsed by the large strike wave that fo…
Free trade and opioid overdose death in the United States
Opioid overdose deaths in the U.S. rose dramatically after 1999, but also exhibited substantial geographic variation. This has largely been explained by differential availability of prescription and non-prescription opioids, including heroin and fentanyl. Recent studies explore the underlying role of socioeconomic factors, but overlook the influence of job loss due to international trade, an economic phenomenon that disproportionately harms the s…
Shocked into Service
Free trade has gradually shifted the burden of military service onto the American South. While trade shocks generally lead to local increases in US Army enlistment, there are two different regional dynamics that concentrate this effect in the South. First, trade-related job losses are disproportionately concentrated in this region, where manufacturing jobs gradually migrated during the second half of the twentieth century. Second, the South’s “mi…
Nafta's Army
I argue that international trade increases military enlistment in the United States. Trade-related job losses reduce economic opportunities in local labor markets, and the government responds by increasing military recruitment efforts in those counties. This dynamic challenges conventional accounts of globalization, which tend to overlook the local impact of free trade and only examine the traditional welfare policies that governments offer to co…
The Gilded Wage
Scholars of international political economy often argue that workers automatically share the same trade policy preferences as their employers. However, this approach assumes that trade policies that increase profits necessarily lead to increases in wages. In contrast, I argue that capital and labor are more likely to share the same trade policy preference when “profit-sharing institutions” permit capital to credibly commit that an increase in pro…
Power over Profits
Contemporary political economy debates tend to assume that an increase in productivity automatically leads to an equal increase in workers' wages. This assumption shapes the way that many scholars think about economic globalization, as well as domestic policy reforms. This assumption is particularly widespread in the field of international political economy, where it is implicitly incorporated through the use of neoclassical economic models. Rath…
Power over Profits
Contemporary political economy debates tend to assume that an increase in productivity automatically leads to an equal increase in workers' wages. This assumption shapes the way that many scholars think about economic globalization, as well as domestic policy reforms. This assumption is particularly widespread in the field of international political economy, where it is implicitly incorporated through the use of neoclassical economic models. Rath…
The Gilded Wage
Scholars of international political economy often argue that workers automatically share the same trade policy preferences as their employers. However, this approach assumes that trade policies that increase profits necessarily lead to increases in wages. In contrast, I argue that capital and labor are more likely to share the same trade policy preference when “profit-sharing institutions” permit capital to credibly commit that an increase in pro…
Nafta's Army
I argue that international trade increases military enlistment in the United States. Trade-related job losses reduce economic opportunities in local labor markets, and the government responds by increasing military recruitment efforts in those counties. This dynamic challenges conventional accounts of globalization, which tend to overlook the local impact of free trade and only examine the traditional welfare policies that governments offer to co…
The Gilded Wage
Scholars of international political economy often argue that workers automatically share the same trade policy preferences as their employers. However, this approach assumes that trade policies that increase profits necessarily lead to increases in wages. In contrast, I argue that capital and labor are more likely to share the same trade policy preference when “profit-sharing institutions” permit capital to credibly commit that an increase in pro…
Power over Profits
Contemporary political economy debates tend to assume that an increase in productivity automatically leads to an equal increase in workers' wages. This assumption shapes the way that many scholars think about economic globalization, as well as domestic policy reforms. This assumption is particularly widespread in the field of international political economy, where it is implicitly incorporated through the use of neoclassical economic models. Rath…
Nafta's Army
I argue that international trade increases military enlistment in the United States. Trade-related job losses reduce economic opportunities in local labor markets, and the government responds by increasing military recruitment efforts in those counties. This dynamic challenges conventional accounts of globalization, which tend to overlook the local impact of free trade and only examine the traditional welfare policies that governments offer to co…
Free trade and opioid overdose death in the United States
Opioid overdose deaths in the U.S. rose dramatically after 1999, but also exhibited substantial geographic variation. This has largely been explained by differential availability of prescription and non-prescription opioids, including heroin and fentanyl. Recent studies explore the underlying role of socioeconomic factors, but overlook the influence of job loss due to international trade, an economic phenomenon that disproportionately harms the s…
Shocked into Service
Free trade has gradually shifted the burden of military service onto the American South. While trade shocks generally lead to local increases in US Army enlistment, there are two different regional dynamics that concentrate this effect in the South. First, trade-related job losses are disproportionately concentrated in this region, where manufacturing jobs gradually migrated during the second half of the twentieth century. Second, the South’s “mi…
Authors’ Response
It is a special honor to publish our work alongside rigorous critiques from Dorothy Sue Cobble, Kristoffer Smemo, Eric Schickler, and Devin Caughey. We are grateful for the opportunity to debate our research in the pages of Labor with such an esteemed and interdisciplinary group of labor historians and political scientists. In this memo we will restate our argument, address three common concerns raised by the commentators, respond to specific que…
Rewarded by Friends and Punished by Enemies
The Wagner Act, passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress in 1935, provided unprecedented federal protections for American labor unions. The Taft-Hartley Act, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress just twelve years later, effectively rolled back significant parts of Wagner. Previous research on Taft-Hartley identifies three factors that led to this anti-labor backlash. First, the American public was repulsed by the large strike wave that fo…
Arresting the Opposition
At the turn of the twenty-first century, why did country after country in the developing world open their economies to the global market? This paper argues that increases in democracy were more likely to lead to trade liberalization when governments violated workers’ basic rights to act collectively. Democracy empowered pro-trade domestic groups and therefore had the potential to lead to trade liberalization, but respect for labor rights empowere…
Free Trade, Repressed Workers
Opening markets, one threat at a time
Since the 1980s, the United States has unilaterally pressured many developing countries to open their markets to American exports. Despite such pressure coinciding with trade liberalization around the world, prior research largely concludes that US pressure was ineffective. This paper challenges this conventional wisdom by mitigating selection bias in previous studies, which focused on late-stage forms of pressure such as Section 301 investigatio…
Economics (6 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Free trade (5 works) · International trade (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Global trade and economics (4 works) · Democracy (3 works)