IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecb/ecbwps/20151774.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does fiscal austerity affect public opinion?

Author

Listed:
  • Stracca, Livio
  • Kalbhenn, Anna

Abstract

In this paper we explore the impact of fiscal austerity on three different dimensions of public opinion (overall life satisfaction and confidence, attitude towards national authorities, and European institutions). Based on a panel of 26 EU countries, we find that, overall, fiscal consolidation episodes tend to have little and inconsistent impact on our measures of public opinion once we include macro controls (real GDP growth, inflation, unemployment, and whether a country is in a EU/IMF program). Some of the circumstances under which consolidation is undertaken are significant in explaining the effect on public opinion, but also these effects are neither strong nor consistent throughout. We conclude that the effect of fiscal consolidation measures on public opinion mainly operates through their effect on the macroeconomy. JEL Classification: H2, H3, H5, H6

Suggested Citation

  • Stracca, Livio & Kalbhenn, Anna, 2015. "Does fiscal austerity affect public opinion?," Working Paper Series 1774, European Central Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20151774
    Note: 335958
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ecb.europa.eu//pub/pdf/scpwps/ecbwp1774.en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carlos A. Vegh & Guillermo Vuletin, 2014. "Social Implications of Fiscal Policy Responses During Crises," NBER Working Papers 19828, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Benjamin Born & Gernot J. Müller & Johannes Pfeifer, 2020. "Does Austerity Pay Off?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(2), pages 323-338, May.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Babecký, Jan & Havránek, Tomáš & Matějů, Jakub & Rusnák, Marek & Šmídková, Kateřina & Vašíček, Bořek, 2014. "Banking, debt, and currency crises in developed countries: Stylized facts and early warning indicators," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 1-17.
    6. Roel Beetsma & Jacopo Cimadomo & Oana Furtuna & Massimo Giuliodori1, 2015. "The confidence effects of fiscal consolidations," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 30(83), pages 439-489.
    7. Luca Agnello & Ricardo M. Sousa, 2014. "How Does Fiscal Consolidation Impact on Income Inequality?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(4), pages 702-726, December.
    8. Stracca, Livio, 2014. "Financial imbalances and household welfare: Empirical evidence from the EU," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 11(C), pages 82-91.
    9. Mr. Andrea Pescatori & Mr. Daniel Leigh & Mr. Jaime Guajardo & Mr. Pete Devries, 2011. "A New Action-Based Dataset of Fiscal Consolidation," IMF Working Papers 2011/128, International Monetary Fund.
    10. Alberto Alesina & Dorian Carloni & Giampaolo Lecce, 2012. "The Electoral Consequences of Large Fiscal Adjustments," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis, pages 531-570, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Ponticelli, Jacopo & Voth, Hans-Joachim, 2020. "Austerity and anarchy: Budget cuts and social unrest in Europe, 1919–2008," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 1-19.
    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. Sarah Brown & Alexandros Kontonikas & Alberto Montagnoli & Mirko Moro & Luisanna Onnis, 2018. "Austerity, Life Satisfaction and Expectations," Working Papers 2018001, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.

    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. Anna Kalbhenn & Livio Stracca, 2020. "Mad about Austerity? The Effect of Fiscal Consolidation on Public Opinion," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(2-3), pages 531-548, March.
    2. Vybhavi Balasundharam & Olivier Basdevant & Dalmacio Benicio & Andrew Ceber & Yujin Kim & Luca Mazzone & Hoda Selim & Yongzheng Yang, 2023. "Fiscal Consolidation: Taking Stock of Success Factors, Impact, and Design," IMF Working Papers 2023/063, International Monetary Fund.
    3. Klein, Mathias & Winkler, Roland, 2019. "Austerity, inequality, and private debt overhang," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 89-106.
    4. Valeria Cirillo & Marcella Corsi & Carlo D’Ippoliti & Lucio Gobbi, 2024. "Asymmetric effects of macro policies on women’s and men’s incomes. An empirical investigation of the eurozone crisis in a gender perspective," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 41(2), pages 327-359, July.
    5. Jorge Pablo Puig & Martin Ardanaz & Eduardo Cavallo & Alejandro Izquierdo, 2021. "Output effects of fiscal consolidations: does spending composition matter?," Asociación Argentina de Economía Política: Working Papers 4507, Asociación Argentina de Economía Política.
    6. Beetsma, Roel & Furtuna, Oana & Giuliodori, Massimo, 2018. "Revenue- versus spending-based consolidation plans: the role of follow-up," Working Paper Series 2178, European Central Bank.
    7. Abel Bojar, 2016. "The Electoral Advantage of the Left in Times of Fiscal Adjustment," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 103, European Institute, LSE.
    8. Beetsma, Roel & Furtuna, Oana & Giuliodori, Massimo & Mumtaz, Haroon, 2021. "Revenue- versus spending-based fiscal consolidation announcements: Multipliers and follow-up," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    9. 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.
    10. Sanz Labrador, Ismael & Sanz-Sanz, José Félix, 2013. "Política fiscal y crecimiento económico: consideraciones microeconómicas y relaciones macroeconómicas," Macroeconomía del Desarrollo 5367, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    11. Banerjee, Ryan & Zampolli, Fabrizio, 2019. "What drives the short-run costs of fiscal consolidation? Evidence from OECD countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 420-436.
    12. Dilla, Diana, 2017. "Staatsverschuldung und Verschuldungsmentalität [Public Debt and Debt Mentality]," MPRA Paper 79432, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Francesco Passarelli & Guido Tabellini, 2017. "Emotions and Political Unrest," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(3), pages 903-946.
    14. Thiemo Fetzer, 2019. "Did Austerity Cause Brexit?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(11), pages 3849-3886, November.
    15. Conrad Scheibe, 2016. "Fiscal Consolidations and Their Effects on Income Inequality," UCL SSEES Economics and Business working paper series 2016-4, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES).
    16. Adrian Chadi & Matthias Krapf, 2017. "The Protestant Fiscal Ethic: Religious Confession And Euro Skepticism In Germany," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1813-1832, October.
    17. Efrem Castelnuovo & Guay Lim, 2019. "What Do We Know About the Macroeconomic Effects of Fiscal Policy? A Brief Survey of the Literature on Fiscal Multipliers," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 52(1), pages 78-93, March.
    18. Agnello, Luca & Castro, Vitor & Sousa, Ricardo M., 2013. "What determines the duration of a fiscal consolidation program?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 113-134.
    19. Alari PaulusBy & Francesco Figari & Holly Sutherland, 2017. "The design of fiscal consolidation measures in the European Union: distributional effects and implications for macro-economic recovery," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(3), pages 632-654.
    20. Nicolas Afflatet & Stephanos Papadamou, 2016. "Public debt and borrowing: Are governments disciplined by financial markets?," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 1225346-122, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Euroscepticism; Fiscal consolidation; primary balance; public opinion; trust;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents
    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
    • H6 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ecb:ecbwps:20151774. 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: Official Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/emieude.html .

    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.