Publications
Browse all our publications
How Americans Think About Health Care and Insurance
This paper investigates how Americans perceive and reason about health insurance policies through two large-scale surveys and experiments conducted in 2019 and 2025. We elicit open-ended considerations, measure factual knowledge, and examine views on equity, fairness, efficiency, and different policies. We also provide respondents with randomized information about health insurance
How Americans Think About Health Care and Insurance
This paper investigates how Americans perceive and reason about health insurance policies through two large-scale surveys and experiments conducted in 2019 and 2025. We elicit open-ended considerations, measure factual knowledge, and examine views on equity, fairness, efficiency, and different policies. We also provide respondents with randomized information about health insurance
All Publications
- Author(s): Beatrice Ferrario, Stefanie Stantcheva
This paper investigates how Americans perceive and reason about health insurance policies through two large-scale surveys and experiments conducted in 2019 and 2025. We elicit open-ended considerations, measure factual knowledge, and examine views on equity,...
- Author(s): Stefanie Stantcheva
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...
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...
- Author(s): Christopher Roth, Ingar Haaland, Johannes Wohlfart, Stefanie Stantcheva
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...
- Author(s): Alberto Binetti, Francesco Nuzzi, Stefanie Stantcheva
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...
- Author(s): Stefanie Stantcheva
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...
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...
- Author(s): Nathan Nunn, Sahil Chinoy, Sandra Sequeira, Stefanie Stantcheva
We investigate the origins and implications of zero-sum thinking -- the belief that gains for one individual or group tend to come at the cost of others. Using a new survey of a representative sample...
- Author(s): Beatrice Ferrario, Stefanie Stantcheva
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...
- Author(s): Stefanie Stantcheva
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...
- Author(s): Claus Kreiner, Kristoffer Hvidberg, Stefanie Stantcheva
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....
- Author(s): Daniel Cohen, Eva Davoine, Martial Foucault, Stefanie Stantcheva, Yann Algan
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...
- Author(s): Stefanie Stantcheva
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...
- Author(s): Alberto Alesina, Stefanie Stantcheva
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...
- Author(s): Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano, Stefanie Stantcheva
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....
- Author(s): David Yang, Joyce Kim, Luca Braghieri, Marcella Alsan, Sarah Eichmeyer, Stefanie Stantcheva
We study to what extent individual preferences for protecting rights and civil liberties are elastic to health insecurity....
- Author(s): David Cutler, David Yang, Marcella Alsan, Stefanie Stantcheva
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...
- Author(s): Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano, Stefanie Stantcheva
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...
- Author(s): Alberto Alesina, Edoardo Teso, Stefanie Stantcheva
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....
- Author(s): Emmanuel Saez, Ilyana Kuziemko, Michael Norton, Stefanie Stantcheva
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...
Updates, Events & News
Updates & Events
News
Stefanie Stantcheva provides research insights on inflation, social mobility and zero-sum thinking in an interview with Die Zeit.
Stefanie Stantcheva provides research insights on Americans' perceptions of the economy and zero-sum thinking in an interview with Stern.
Stefanie Stantcheva discusses her work at the Social Economics Lab and explores zero-sum thinking in an interview with la Repubblica.
Stefanie Stantcheva shares her insights on zero-sum thinking and trade policy in an interview with NZZ.
Young people and city-dwellers are among those most likely to see one group’s gain as another’s loss