Read on Twitter
A thread on our little paper in this issue, to celebrate it getting its page numbers (1/n) https://twitter.com/PSRMJournal/status/1356290694411939841
@HicksTM and I have been puzzled by preferences over *borrowing* in response to economic crises (unfortunately we're salient again!). While people may "hunker down" on social spending when times are bad, we weren't sure that's the same as procyclical debt prefs (2/n)
Expecting procylicality, though, we ran a good economic news/bad econ. news experiment. We randomly assigned people to see info on British economic growth as either (a) negative and worse than other European countries, or (b) positive and better than those same counterparts. 3/n
Respondents were then immediately asked a question capturing attitudes about the importance of deficit reduction. (4/n)
We were wrong!
The people shown a more positive view of the UK economy expressed *greater* hostility for government borrowing.
Preferences over deficits were countercyclical. (5/n)
The people shown a more positive view of the UK economy expressed *greater* hostility for government borrowing.
Preferences over deficits were countercyclical. (5/n)
But we also show some observational evidence that this may not be stable over time: associations between support for deficit reduction and evaluation of economic performance in the UK "turn" counter-cyc. in 2013 (6/n)
It's an entirely empirical research note, but (I think) an interesting piece of our emerging understanding attitudes towards government deficits and borrowing. (n/n) @CatherineDVries @CharlotteCavai1 @SattlersThomas @bjoern_bremer
