In response to the recent sovereign debt crisis, the member states of the European Union agreed to enact balanced budget rules in their national legislation. However, little is known about the public's opinion of balanced budget rules. To fill this gap, we conducted a survey among 2,000...

This paper empirically analyses the relationship between political leaders' socioeconomic backgrounds and public budget deficits utilising panel data on 21 OECD countries from 1980 to 2008. Building on sociological, as well as economic, research, we argue that the socioeconomic status of...

This paper investigates whether the socioeconomic status of the head of government helps explain fiscal performance. Applying sociological research that attributes differences in people's ways of thinking and acting to their relative standing within society, we test whether the social status of...

This paper provides background information and basic descriptive statistics for a representative survey of the German population conducted on our behalf by GfK in the first quarter of 2013. The survey addresses important topics in fiscal policy, including: 1) public preferences on the...

This paper provides background information and basic descriptive statistics for a representative survey of the New Zealand population conducted on our behalf by Research New Zealand in May 2016. The survey addresses important fiscal and monetary policy issues, including: (1) public preferences...

We show that the correct experiment to evaluate the effects of a fiscal adjustment is the simulation of a multi year fiscal plan rather than of individual fiscal shocks. Simulation of fiscal plans adopted by 16 OECD countries over a 30-year period supports the hypothesis that the effects of...

In response to the economic crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments provided financial assistance to households. Using representative consumer surveys conducted during the pandemic in 2020, we examine the effects of this fiscal policy instrument on households in two emerging...

In response to the economic crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments provided financial assistance to households. Using representative consumer surveys conducted during the pandemic in 2020, we examine the effects of this fiscal policy instrument on households in two emerging...