Beliefs About Public Debt and the Demand for Government Spending

Roth, Christopher; Settele, Sonja; Wohlfart, Johannes

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3528060

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Below we describe the participant pool from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online labor market which is increasingly used to conduct experimental research (Cavallo et al, 2017;D'Acunto, 2018;Kuziemko et al, 2015;Roth et al, 2019). Below we discuss some advantages and disadvantages of using MTurk.…”

Section: C1 Amazon Mechanical Turkmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Do Expectations about the Macroeconomy Affect Personal Expectations and Behavior?

Roth

Wohlfart

2020

Review of Economics and Statistics

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209

121

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Using a representative online panel from the US, we examine how individuals' macroeconomic expectations causally affect their personal economic prospects and their behavior. To exogenously vary respondents' expectations, we provide them with different professional forecasts about the likelihood of a recession. Respondents update their macroeconomic outlook in response to the forecasts, extrapolate to expectations about their personal economic circumstances and adjust their consumption plans and stock purchases. Extrapolation to expectations about personal unemployment is driven by individuals with higher exposure to macroeconomic risk, consistent with macroeconomic models of imperfect information in which people are inattentive, but understand how the economy works.

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Section: C1 Amazon Mechanical Turkmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Do Expectations about the Macroeconomy Affect Personal Expectations and Behavior?

Roth

Wohlfart

2020

Review of Economics and Statistics

Self Cite

209

121

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“…The effects of the economic environment -captured by macro variables-on preferences for redistribution has also received recent attention: economic recessions experienced at young age (Giuliano and Spilimbergo 2014); income inequality experienced at young age (Roth and Wohlfart 2018); the recent Great Recession (Fisman et al 2015) and actual public debt (Roth et al 2019). Culture and identity have also emerged as an important driver for redistributive preferences (Shayo 2009, Luttmer and Singhal 2011, Costa-Font and Cowell 2015, as well as immigration perceptions (Alesina et al 2019, Alesina et al 2018b).…”

Section: Theoretical Framework 21 Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Preferences for redistribution and exposure to tax-benefit schemes in Europe

Andreoli

Olivera

2020

European Journal of Political Economy

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This paper provides evidence that attitudes towards redistribution are associated with the extent of generosity of the redistributive context experienced by the individual, as measured by the likelihood of receiving positive benefit transfers net of fiscal contribution. We estimate reduced form tax-benefit equations with the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), and match the implied parameters to the respondents of the European Social Survey (ESS) on the basis of their characteristics. The period of analysis is 2008-2016. For identification, we exploit exogenous crosscountry and time variation in tax rules and market income to disentangle implications of exposure to tax-benefit rules on preferences for redistribution from the effects of changes in income inequality. We find that exposure to positive net benefits increases demand for redistribution by about 1.2%, the effect being robust across a variety of specifications. The signs of the effects are consistent with those predicted by a simple model where exposure to redistribution affects expectations for consumption, but risk averse individuals discount this effect by the nature of income shocks they are exposed to in the market.

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“…10 Our results also support the priming race psychological research by Tesler (2015a,b). 11 For recent examples, see Armantier et al (2016); Delavande and Zafar (2018); Fuster et al (2018); Andre et al (2019); Armona et al (2019); Roth and Wohlfart (2020); Roth et al (2021). 2021) 12 , and the amount of discrimination faced by Black Americans in the labor market (Haaland and Roth, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Race and Redistribution in the United States: An Experimental Analysis

Åkesson¹,

Hahn²,

Metcalfe³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Scholars have suggested that White American support for welfare is related to beliefs about the racial composition of welfare recipients. While a host of observational studies lend credence to this view, it has not yet been tested using the tools of randomized inference. In this study, we do this by conducting two incentive-compatible experiments (n = 9,775) in which different participants are randomly given different signals about the share of welfare recipients who identify as Black and White. Our analysis yields four main findings. First, 86% of respondentsgreatly overestimate the share of welfare recipients who are Black, with the average respondent overestimating this by almost a factor of two. Second, White support for welfare is inversely related to the proportion of welfare recipients who are Black—a causal claim that we establish using treatment assignment as an instrument for beliefs about the racial composition of welfare recipients. Third, just making White participants think about the racial composition of welfare recipients reduces their support for welfare. Fourth, providing White respondents with accurateinformation about the racial composition of welfare recipients (relative to not receiving any information) does not significantly influence their support for welfare.

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Beliefs About Public Debt and the Demand for Government Spending

Cited by 10 publications

References 33 publications

How Do Expectations about the Macroeconomy Affect Personal Expectations and Behavior?

How Do Expectations about the Macroeconomy Affect Personal Expectations and Behavior?

Preferences for redistribution and exposure to tax-benefit schemes in Europe

Race and Redistribution in the United States: An Experimental Analysis

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