Voter Attitudes Towards Fiscal Trade-Offs: Evidence from Three European Countries

Huebscher, Evelyne; Sattler, Thomas; Truchlewski, Zbigniew

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3747664

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…This approach is taken by Bonica (2015), who uses an online budgeting task that allows respondents to reallocate the U.S. federal budget from its existing baseline (holding tax and deficit constant) across 21 spending areas. This approach has been adopted in a number of recent studies (D'Attoma, Tuxhorn, and Steinmo 2018; Hübscher, Sattler, and Truchlewski 2020). However, solving the full budget allocation represents a highly challenging task for respondents, motivating the search for a more accessible survey instrument.…”

Section: What Do We Know About Budget Attitudes and How To Measure Them?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There have already been attempts to use forced‐choice designs to investigate budget preferences. In Bremer and Bürgisser (2019) and Hübscher, Sattler, and Wagner (2020), respondents are asked to choose a package of fiscal proposals that differ in terms of spending, taxation, and government debt. In each of these approaches, the direction of the changes are specified—increases or decreases in taxes and spending of different types, which may be “small” or “large.” Thus, preferences over tax levels and spending within this directionally balanced budget are elicited.…”

Section: What Do We Know About Budget Attitudes and How To Measure Them?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Measuring Attitudes toward Public Spending Using a Multivariate Tax Summary Experiment

Barnes

Blumenau

Lauderdale

2021

American J Political Sci

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It is difficult to measure public views on trade‐offs between spending priorities because public understanding of existing government spending is limited and the budgetary problem is complicated. We present a new measurement strategy using a continuous treatment, multivariate choice experiment. The experiment proposes deficit‐neutral bundles of changes in spending and taxation, allowing us to investigate attitudes toward modifications to the existing budget. We then use a structural choice model to estimate public preferences over spending categories and the taxation level, on average and as a function of respondent attributes. In our application, we find that the UK public favors paying more in tax to finance large spending increases across major budget categories, that spending preferences are multidimensional, and that younger people prefer lower levels of taxation and spending than older people.

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Section: What Do We Know About Budget Attitudes and How To Measure Them?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: What Do We Know About Budget Attitudes and How To Measure Them?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Attitudes toward Public Spending Using a Multivariate Tax Summary Experiment

Barnes

Blumenau

Lauderdale

2021

American J Political Sci

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“…For most Germans, prioritizing international competitiveness over consumption or investment does not yield immediate material benefits. Nonetheless, German voters and interest groups consistently support policies that generate external surpluses, such as fiscal restraint and low-deficit policies (Redeker and Walter, 2020;Hübscher, Sattler and Truchlewski, 2021).…”

Section: Building Popular Support For An Economic Strategy: the Role Of Political Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nonetheless, German voters and interest groups consistently support policies that generate external surpluses, such as low-deficit policies (Redeker and Walter, 2020;Hübscher, Sattler and Truchlewski, 2021). It remains unclear why a large majority of the population tolerates a large external surplus that deprives them of higher wages and consumption opportunities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exports vs. investment: How political discourse shapes popular support for external imbalances

Ferrara

Haas

Peterson

et al. 2021

Socio-Economic Review

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The economic imbalances that characterize the world economy have unequally distributed costs and benefits. That raises the question of how countries could run long-term external surpluses and deficits without significant opposition against the policies that generate them. We show that political discourse helps to secure public support for these policies and the resulting economic outcomes. First, a content analysis of 32 000 newspaper articles finds that the dominant interpretations of current account balances in Australia and Germany concur with very distinct perspectives: external surpluses are seen as evidence of competitiveness in Germany, while external deficits are interpreted as evidence of attractiveness for investments in Australia. Second, survey experiments in both countries suggest that exposure to these diverging interpretations has a causal effect on citizens’ support for their country’s economic strategy. Political discourse, thus, is crucial to provide the societal foundation of national growth strategies.

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Threats and the Public Constraint on Military Spending

DiGiuseppe,

Aspide,

Becker

2023

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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The public places an important constraint on funding security in Europe, and austerity risks making the constraint tighter. Several recent studies show that curtailing military spending is a popular way to reduce debt in Europe. Yet it remains unclear if military spending aversion persists when threats are salient. We fielded an original survey experiment in Italy weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine to examine how information about security threats influences military spending preferences and fiscal trade-offs. We found that information about threats increases support for military spending. To validate the survey experiment, we recontacted and remeasured our respondent's preferences three weeks after Russia's invasion and find evidence consistent with our initial experiment. Our findings suggest that, while public opposition to military spending remains high in Italy, external threats dampen the public's opposition to military spending, even under high debt burdens.

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Voter Attitudes Towards Fiscal Trade-Offs: Evidence from Three European Countries

Cited by 4 publications

References 50 publications

Measuring Attitudes toward Public Spending Using a Multivariate Tax Summary Experiment

Measuring Attitudes toward Public Spending Using a Multivariate Tax Summary Experiment

Exports vs. investment: How political discourse shapes popular support for external imbalances

Threats and the Public Constraint on Military Spending

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