Youth Awareness and Expectations about GMOs and Nuclear Power Technologies within the North American Free Trade Bloc: A Retrospective Cross-Country Comparative Analysis
Abstract
This study reports on the cross-country heterogeneity in youth awareness and expectations
about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and nuclear power technology (NPT) within the North
American free trade area (NAFTA). Models are estimated with data on youth respondents from the
USA, Canada and Mexico, using seemingly unrelated bivariate weighted ordered probit regression,
with maximum simulated likelihood estimation. Our findings show that the diffusion of technology
and information within the trade bloc, for the 20 years prior to the 2015 data collection period,
did not significantly contribute to cross-country convergence in youth awareness and expectations
about GMOs and NPTs. Indeed, with regard to awareness, compared to youth from the USA,
those from Canada show 15% (GMOs) and 7.1% (NPT) more awareness, respectively; while youth
from Mexico show 34.4% and 19.5% less awareness about GMOs and NPT, respectively. With respect
to expectations about future developments of the two technological artifacts, compared to youth
from the USA, those from Canada and Mexico are 34.4% and 39.9% more optimistic about GMOs,
respectively, while 15% and 49.7% are more optimistic about NPT. Overall, our findings show that
the youth population within NAFTA is 2.5% and 6.7% more optimistic about GMOs and NPT for
each level of increase in their awareness about the two technologies, respectively. Theoretically, our
results seem to reject the hypothesis of NAFTA being a technology convergence country club in the
Schumpeterian view, while seemingly supporting the existence of heterogeneous growth regimes
within NAFTA.
Author
Niankara, Ibrahim
Adkins, Lee C.