Perceptions, Mindsets and Beliefs Shaping Policy Views (2024 Economica-Coase Lecture)
In this lecture, I investigate how perceptions, mindsets, and beliefs influence public attitudes toward economic policies, building on existing research. I introduce a conceptual framework that highlights the roles of self-interest, broader societal impacts, and cognitive mindsets—such as zero-sum thinking and partisanship—in shaping policy preferences. Using evidence from large-scale social economics surveys, I explore four policy areas– taxation, climate action, inflation management, and trade– and provide evidence on the factors driving policy support.
Fighting Climate Change: International Attitudes Toward Climate Policies
Using new surveys on more than 40,000 respondents in twenty countries that account for 72% of global CO2 emissions, we study the understanding of and attitudes toward climate change
Understanding Economic Behavior Using Open-ended Survey Data
We survey the recent literature in economics measuring what is on top of people’s minds using open-ended questions. We first provide an overview of studies in political economy, macroeconomics, finance, labor economics, and behavioral economics that have employed such measurement. We next describe different ways of measuring the considerations that are on top of people’s minds. We also provide an overview of methods to annotate and analyze such data. Next, we discuss different types of applications, including the measurement of motives, mental models, narratives, attention, information transmission, and recall. Our review highlights the potential of using open-ended questions to gain a deeper understanding of mechanisms underlying observed choices and expectations.
People’s Understanding of Inflation
This paper studies people’s understanding of inflation — their perceived causes, consequences, trade-offs — and the policies supported to mitigate its effects. We design a new, detailed online survey based on the rich existing literature in economics with two experimental components — a conjoint experiment and an information experiment — to examine how well public views align with established economic theories. Our key findings show that the major perceived causes of inflation include government actions, such as increased foreign aid and war related expenditures, alongside rises in production costs attributed to recent events like the COVID-19 pandemic, oil price fluctuations, and supply chain disruptions.
Why do We Dislike Inflation?
This paper provides new evidence on a long-standing question asked by Shiller (1997): Why do we dislike inflation? I conducted two surveys on representative samples of the US population to elicit people’s perceptions about the impacts of inflation and their reactions to it. The predominant reason for people’s aversion to inflation is the widespread belief that it diminishes their buying power, as neither personal nor general wage increases seem to match the pace of rising prices. As a result, respondents report having to make costly adjustments in their budgets and behaviors, especially among lower-income groups. Inflation also provokes stress, emotional responses, and a sense of inequity, as the wages of high-income individuals are perceived to grow more rapidly amidst inflation. Many respondents believe that firms have considerable discretion in setting wages, opting not to raise them in order to boost profits, rather than being compelled by market dynamics. The potential positive associations of inflation, such as with reduced unemployment or enhanced economic activity, are typically not recognized by respondents. Inflation ranks high in priority among various economic and social issues, with respondents blaming the government and businesses for it. I also highlight a substantial polarization in attitudes towards inflation along partisan lines, as well as across income groups.
The Health of Democracies during the Pandemic: Results from a Randomized Survey Experiment
There is a growing global concern about the health of democracies (Rubin, 2022). Although support for civil liberties had weakened prior to COVID-19 – the pandemic and the public health responses it elicited could possibly accelerate a trend towards autocracy. Anticipating this threat, during the first few months of the pandemic our team conducted in-depth survey experiments across several Western democratic countries to assess whether providing information on stringent measures used to contain the virus in East Asian countries (i.e., China and South Korea) would affect citizens’ views regarding their willingness to curtail their own civil liberties.
Eliciting People’s First-Order Concerns
This paper illustrates the design and use of open-ended survey questions as a way of eliciting people’s first-order concerns on policies. Multiple choice questions are the backbone of most surveys, but they may prime respondents to select answer options that they would not naturally have thought about, and they may omit relevant options.
How to Run Surveys: A guide to creating your own identifying variation and revealing the invisible
This paper offers guidance to researchers on how to create surveys. It covers the complete survey process, the design of the questions and experiments to the recruitment of respondents, the collection of data to the analysis of survey responses, and more.
Social Positions and Fairness Views on Inequality
We link survey data on Danish people’s perceived income positions and views on inequality within various reference groups to administrative records on their reference groups, income histories, and life events.
Trust in Scientists in Times of Pandemic: Panel Evidence from 12 Countries
This article analyzes the specific and critical role of trust in scientists on both the support for and compliance with nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We exploit large-scale, longitudinal, and representative surveys for 12 countries over the period from March to December 2020, and we complement the analysis with experimental data.
Understanding Tax Policy: How do People Reason?
I study how people understand, reason, and learn about two major tax policies: income taxation and estate taxation. Using large-scale social economics surveys issued to representative U.S. samples and associated experiments, I elicit respondents’ factual knowledge about tax policy and the income or wealth distributions.
Diversity, Immigration and Redistribution
This paper provides a simple conceptual framework that captures how different perceptions, attitudes, and biases about immigrants or minorities can shape preferences for redistribution and reviews the empirical evidence on the effects of increasing racial diversity and immigration on support for redistribution.
The Polarization of Reality
Americans are polarized not only in their views on policy issues and attitudes towards government and society, but also in their perceptions of the same, factual reality.
Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis
We study to what extent individual preferences for protecting rights and civil liberties are elastic to health insecurity.
Disparities in Coronavirus 2019 Reported Incidence, Knowledge, and Behavior Among US Adults
In this survey study of US adults, there were gaps in reported incidence of COVID-19 and knowledge regarding its spread and symptoms and social distancing behavior. More effort is needed to increase accurate information and encourage appropriate behaviors among minority communities, men, and younger people.
Immigration and Redistribution
Does immigration change support for redistribution? We design and conduct large-scale surveys and experiments in six countries to investigate how people perceive immigrants and how these perceptions influence their support for redistribution. We find striking misperceptions about the number and characteristics of immigrants.
Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution
Using new cross-country survey and experimental data, we investigate how beliefs about intergenerational mobility affect preferences for redistribution in France, Italy, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S.
How Elastic are Preferences for Redistribution?
We develop online survey experiments to analyze how information about inequality and taxes affects preferences for redistribution. Approximately 4,000 respondents were randomized into treatments providing interactive, customized information on U.S. income inequality, the link between top income tax rates and economic growth, and the estate tax.
