Extant scholarship on embedded liberalism (EL) emphasizes whether governments keep their promises to protect the risk-bearers of economic liberalization but overlooks its liberalization effect. In particular, scholars rarely explore how EL solves the time-inconsistency problem plaguing economic liberalization, i.e., governments may ex post renege on their policy promises made prior to the liberalization. To fill this void, in this study, I look into how social insurance shapes efforts to liberalize trade. I argue that institutionalized social consensus such as labor market institutions (LMIs) mitigates the time-inconsistency problem and encourages trade liberalization. I test this argument by examining how LMIs affect the making and design of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Leveraging comprehensive datasets on labor laws and PTAs, an endogenous count model analysis finds that strong labor laws are positively associated with the growth of PTAs. Furthermore, robust labor laws tend to produce deeper PTAs with rigorous enforcement mechanisms. These effects dominate in democracies and are not a function of policy substitution. The empirical findings remain considerably consistent across alternative econometric estimators, variable measures, and model specifications, except those concerning enforcement-related hypotheses. Overall, this study demonstrates that pre-committed social protection facilitates economic liberalization, corroborating the core thesis of EL.

中文翻译：

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重新审视嵌入式自由主义：理论可能性是否满足经验有效性？分析劳动法和优惠贸易协定


现存的关于嵌入式自由主义 （EL） 的学术研究强调政府是否信守承诺，保护经济自由化的风险承担者，但忽视了其自由化效果。特别是，学者们很少探讨 EL 如何解决困扰经济自由化的时间不一致问题，即政府可能会在事后违背他们在自由化之前做出的政策承诺。为了填补这一空白，在这项研究中，我研究了社会保险如何影响贸易自由化的努力。我认为，劳动力市场机构 （LMI） 等制度化的社会共识缓解了时间不一致问题并鼓励贸易自由化。我通过研究 LMI 如何影响优惠贸易协定 （PTA） 的制定和设计来检验这一论点。利用关于劳动法和 PTA 的综合数据集，内生计数模型分析发现，强有力的劳动法与 PTA 的增长呈正相关。此外，健全的劳动法往往会产生具有严格执行机制的更深入的 PTA。这些影响在民主国家占主导地位，而不是政策替代的功能。除了那些关于执法相关假设的假设外，实证结果在替代计量经济学估计器、可变度量和模型规范之间保持相当一致。总体而言，本研究证明，预先承诺的社会保障促进了经济自由化，证实了 EL 的核心论点。