Are individuals accurately informed about their place in the income distribution? Despite the importance of accurate information about one’s placement in the income distribution for many models of redistribution, this assumption remains untested. We present survey data and an embedded experiment where we inform some individuals their true place in the income distribution. We then assess the impact of such information on tax progressivity preferences. We find that individuals have considerable error regarding their self-placement in the income distribution. Revealing to individuals their true placement affects progressivity preferences for individuals who learn they are poor, and for individuals whose prior is that they are poor. These results have implications for information assumptions of redistribution models of comparative political economy and contribute to our understanding of tax preferences, an understudied dimension of redistribution preferences.

This article reviews recent contributions addressing the following questions:Under what circumstances is monetary policy delegated to politically independent central banks? What effects do these politically independent institutions have, and how do they interact with their macroeconomic institutional environment? What explains the variation in their behavior? And finally, to what extent has the recent economic crisis altered the role of these institutions? In answering these questions, this article advances two arguments.First, even though central banks' activities involve a great deal of technical knowledge, they are unavoidably political institutions: They make distributional choices informed by ideas, preferences, and the political context in which they operate. Second, the economic crisis, by expanding the type of activities that monetary authorities undertake, further contributes to the politicization of these institutions. The final section of the article speculates about the implications of these developments for economic policy making in contemporary democracies.

What is the impact of economic suffering on support for euro membership and austerity policies in the Eurozone periphery? This article uses original public opinion and firm surveys conducted in Spain in the midst of the great recession to describe the structure of preferences toward the euro as a common currency and austerity policies, focusing on the specific impact of crisis exposure. We find that in spite of the depth and the duration of the economic crisis, support for Spain’s membership in the Eurozone is strong. However, while economic suffering divides the electorate on support for the euro and austerity, it does not do so for firms. Surprisingly, individuals who have suffered due to the crisis in terms of higher income loss are more skeptical of tax and spend programs but are more critical of the euro. Moreover, individuals who are skeptical of the euro and austerity are demographically distinct groups of people. One implication of our joint individual and firm-level findings is that a coalition to seriously challenge the status quo policy coalition remains difficult.

What explains individual support for inter-regional redistribution? Few studies examine support for regional redistribution, even though such issues are politically salient in many democracies. We test models that hypothesize that such preferences are affected by regional and individual income, as well as other arguments beyond the traditional political economy framework. We focus on informational assumptions and implications of these models with an experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey in Spain. We randomly inform some citizens of the true relative income of their region to assess the impact of this information on regional redistribution preferences. We find that citizens' learning about their region's relative position affects these preferences in a manner consistent with some of the political economy models. We also find some support for out-group concerns as an important factor. The findings have implications for the applicability of economic models to explaining support for regional arrangements.