How do voters form positive economic beliefs? Evidence from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy

Abstract

Beliefs about normative economics appear to be primarily determined by sociotropic rather than egocentric variables. (Sears & Funk, 1990; Citrin & Green, 1990) Using the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy, the current paper finds that the same holds for positiveeconomic beliefs in most – but not all – cases. This hinges on whether a question is “causal” or “non-causal”: Causal beliefs depend on sociotropic variables, especially education and ideology; non-causal beliefs, in contrast, depend on egocentric variables, with income growth playing the leading role. This is consistent with a cognitive model where actors answer easier questions using personal experience, and harder ones with ``off-the-shelf" theories. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006Economic beliefs, Sociotropic voting, Voter cognition,

Near Is My Shirt but Nearer Is My Skin: Ideology or Self-Interest as Determinants of Public Opinion on Fiscal Policy Issues

“…Nevertheless, opinion formation depends on individual views of the world and is therefore often influenced by underlying beliefs (Caplan, 2006). Our results presented above indicate at least some interaction of ideology and (perceived) self-interest.…”

“…However, subjective self-interest and ideology both substitute objective measures of self-interest to a certain degree. This addresses the question whether and to which extent (political) ideology is the laymen's shortcut to political opinion formation, not because of some normative view of the world, but because ideology shapes the positive view of how the economy works (Caplan, 2006). Subjective and objective self-interest as well as ideology only explain a small part of the formation of public opinions.…”

“…the opinion whether a specific economic policy should be carried out is often not systematically related to egoistic motivations. Empirical studies for the U.S. (Walstad, 1997;Caplan, 2001Caplan, , 2002Caplan, , 2006 and for Germany (Heinemann et al, 2007) conclude that knowledge and ideology are of special relevance in explaining the bias, or are even the main determinants of opinion formation.…”

Positive versus normative economics: what’s the connection? Evidence from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy and the General Social Survey

“…One of us has already extensively explored the SAEE (Caplan 2001(Caplan , 2002a(Caplan , 2002b(Caplan , 2006(Caplan , 2007. Since Caplan interpreted all of the questions on the SAEE as positive, however, none of his prior research on this data set was able to test for a connection between positive and normative beliefs.…”

“…Since the SAEE specifically focuses on economics, we follow Caplan (2001Caplan ( , 2002aCaplan ( , 2002bCaplan ( , 2006Caplan ( , 2007 in using virtually all of the questions, 37 in total (Table 1). The GSS, on the other hand, covers literally hundreds of subjects, so we had to select a sub-set of economically relevant questions.…”