Interaction Effects in Probit Models, Reinterpreting the Impact of Education on Attitudes towards Immigrants and Free-Trade

Economic literature has examined the impact of education and factors endowment on individual preferences towards free-trade and immigration by focusing on the sign of an interaction term between the educational level and the Gross Domestic Product per capita. The aim of this paper is to re-examine this issue by employing the new method proposed Ai and Norton (2003). Findings showed that attitudes are not fully in line with theHeckscher-Ohlin model. That is, high educated people in richer countries could be against immigration and free-trade if their overall disposition to these issues is bad.