IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v44y2014icp13-20.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Lay people’s models of the economy: A study based on surveys of consumer sentiments

Author

Listed:
  • Dixon, R.
  • Griffiths, W.
  • Lim, G.C.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to use a large data set comprising individual’s responses to survey questions about future economic conditions, unemployment and prices to explore lay people’s models of the economy and specifically their understanding of the relationship between unemployment and economic activity and also between unemployment and prices. The data is taken from the questionnaires used to form monthly indexes of consumer sentiments in Australia. We ask if the implied bivariate relationships are rational in the sense used by Muth (1961) and if they are consistent with the good-begets-good heuristic proposed by Leiser and Aroch (2009). We also ask if they are consistent with the actual operation of economic – and especially monetary – policy in Australia. We find that the data does provide some support for these hypotheses and for recent work in behavioural macroeconomics utilising the good-begets-good heuristic.

Suggested Citation

  • Dixon, R. & Griffiths, W. & Lim, G.C., 2014. "Lay people’s models of the economy: A study based on surveys of consumer sentiments," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 13-20.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:44:y:2014:i:c:p:13-20
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2014.06.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487014000403
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joep.2014.06.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Helmut Stix, 2013. "Does the Broad Public Want to Consolidate Public Debt? – The Role of Fairness and of Policy Credibility," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(1), pages 102-129, February.
    2. Williamson, Maureen R. & Wearing, Alexander J., 1996. "Lay people's cognitive models of the economy," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 3-38, February.
    3. Robert J. Blendon, 1997. "Bridging the Gap between the Public's and Economists' Views of the Economy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 105-118, Summer.
    4. Gangl, Katharina & Kastlunger, Barbara & Kirchler, Erich & Voracek, Martin, 2012. "Confidence in the economy in times of crisis: Social representations of experts and laypeople," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 603-614.
    5. Gaffeo, Edoardo & Canzian, Giulia, 2011. "The psychology of inflation, monetary policy and macroeconomic instability," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 660-670.
    6. Ganzach, Yoav, 2000. "Judging Risk and Return of Financial Assets," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 353-370, November.
    7. Caplan, Bryan, 2001. "What Makes People Think Like Economists? Evidence on Economic Cognition from the "Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy."," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(2), pages 395-426, October.
    8. Friedrich Heinemann & Tanja Hennighausen, 2012. "Understanding Public Debt Preferences," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 68(4), pages 406-430, December.
    9. Leiser, David & Drori, Shelly, 2005. "NaIve understanding of inflation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 179-198, March.
    10. Ranyard, Rob & Missier, Fabio Del & Bonini, Nicolao & Duxbury, Darren & Summers, Barbara, 2008. "Perceptions and expectations of price changes and inflation: A review and conceptual framework," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 378-400, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elisa Darriet & Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde, 2015. "Why lay social representations of the economy should count in economics," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 14(2), pages 245-258, November.
    2. van Giesen, Roxanne I. & Pieters, Rik, 2019. "Climbing out of an economic crisis: A cycle of consumer sentiment and personal stress," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 109-124.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Johnny Runge & Nathan Hudson-Sharp, 2020. "Public Understanding of Economics and Economic Statistics," Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Occasional Papers ESCOE-OP-03, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE).
    2. Haferkamp, Alexandra & Fetchenhauer, Detlef & Belschak, Frank & Enste, Dominik, 2009. "Efficiency versus fairness: The evaluation of labor market policies by economists and laypeople," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 527-539, August.
    3. Leiser, David & Benita, Rinat & Bourgeois-Gironde, Sacha, 2016. "Differing conceptions of the causes of the economic crisis: Effects of culture, economic training, and personal impact," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 154-163.
    4. Bruine de Bruin, Wändi & van der Klaauw, Wilbert & van Rooij, Maarten & Teppa, Federica & de Vos, Klaas, 2017. "Measuring expectations of inflation: Effects of survey mode, wording, and opportunities to revise," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 45-58.
    5. Barbara Bechter & Bernd Brandl & Gerhard Schwarz, 2009. "Determinanten der Einstellung zu wirtschaftspolitischen Maßnahmen," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 37321.
    6. Bruine de Bruin, Wändi & van der Klaauw, Wilbert & Topa, Giorgio & Downs, Julie S. & Fischhoff, Baruch & Armantier, Olivier, 2012. "The effect of question wording on consumers’ reported inflation expectations," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 749-757.
    7. Wobker, Inga & Lehmann-Waffenschmidt, Marco & Kenning, Peter & Gigerenzer, Gerd, 2012. "What do people know about the economy? A test of minimal economic knowledge in Germany," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 03/12, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.
    8. Olivier Armantier & Wändi Bruine de Bruin & Julie S. Downs & Baruch Fischhoff & Giorgio Topa & Wilbert Van der Klaauw, 2010. "The effect of question wording on reported expectations and perceptions of inflation," Staff Reports 443, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    9. Bruine de Bruin, Wändi & van der Klaauw, Wilbert & van Rooij, Maarten & Teppa, Federica & de Vos, Klaas, 2017. "Measuring expectations of inflation: Effects of survey mode, wording, and opportunities to revise," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 45-58.
    10. Elisa Darriet & Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde, 2015. "Why lay social representations of the economy should count in economics," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 14(2), pages 245-258, November.
    11. Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde & David Leiser & Rinat Benita, 2010. "Human Foibles or Systemic Failure -- Lay Perceptions of the 2008-09 Financial Crisis," Post-Print ijn_00445611, HAL.
    12. Bryan Caplan & Edward Stringham, 2005. "Mises, bastiat, public opinion, and public choice," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 79-105.
    13. Hayo, Bernd & Neumeier, Florian, 2017. "The (In)validity of the Ricardian equivalence theorem–findings from a representative German population survey," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 162-174.
    14. Bernd Hayo & Florian Neumeier, 2017. "Public Attitudes toward Fiscal Consolidation: Evidence from a Representative German Population Survey," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(1), pages 42-69, February.
    15. Dilla, Diana, 2017. "Staatsverschuldung und Verschuldungsmentalität [Public Debt and Debt Mentality]," MPRA Paper 79432, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Levy, Daniel & Snir, Avichai, 2022. "Potterian Economics," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 1, pages 1-32.
    17. Berg, Nathan & Biele, Guido & Gigerenzer, Gerd, 2010. "Does consistency predict accuracy of beliefs?: Economists surveyed about PSA," MPRA Paper 26590, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Klein, Daniel B. & Stern, Charlotta, 2005. "Narrow-Tent Democrats and Fringe Others: The Policy Views of Social Science Professors," Working Paper Series 8/2005, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    19. Pierre Mandon, 2014. "Evaluating Treatment Effect and Causal Effect of Fiscal Rules on Procyclicality," Working Papers hal-01015439, HAL.
    20. Nektarios Michail & Theodosis Kallenos & Ioanna Evangelou, 2024. "Are agents Ricardian? Evidence from the CBC survey," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 44(3), pages 1147-1152.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumer sentiments survey; Good-begets-good heuristic; Behavioural macroeconomics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:44:y:2014:i:c:p:13-20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.