Dispelling Misconceptions about Economics

Isabel Busom (), Cristina Lopez-Mayan, Judith Panadés and Jordi Brandts

No 1096, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: Some popular views about the workings of the economy are completely at odds with solid empirical evidence and congruent theoretical explanations and therefore can be qualified as misconceptions. Such beliefs lead to support for harmful policies. Cognitive biases may contribute to explaining why misconceptions persist even when scientific information is provided to people. We conduct two experimental studies to investigate, for the first time in economics, whether presenting information in a refutational way affects people's beliefs about an important socio-economic issue on which expert consensus is very strong: the harmful effects of rent controls. In the laboratory (Study 1) both our refutational and non-refutational messages induce a belief change in the direction of expert knowledge. The refutational message, however, does not improve significantly on the non-refutational one. In the field (Study 2), where participants are college students receiving economic training, the refutational text improves, subject to some caveats, on standard instruction but not on the non-refutational message.

Keywords: misconceptions; biases; rent control; economic communication; persuasion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 A2 D9 I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Dispelling misconceptions about economics (2022)
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