 Expectation management of policy leaders: Evidence from COVID-19Peter Haan, Andreas Peichl, Annekatrin Schrenker, Georg Weizsäcker and Joachim Winter Journal of Public Economics, 2022, vol. 209, issue C Abstract: This paper studies how the communication of political leaders affects the expectation formation of the public. Specifically, we examine the expectation management of the German government regarding COVID-19-related regulatory measures during the early phase of the pandemic. We elicit beliefs about the duration of these restrictions via a high-frequency survey of individuals, accompanied by an additional survey of firms. To quantify the success of policy communication, we use a regression discontinuity design and study how beliefs about the duration of the regulatory measures changed in response to three nationally televised press conferences by former Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Prime Ministers of the German federal states. We find that the announcements of Angela Merkel and her colleagues significantly prolonged the expected duration of restrictions, with effects being strongest for individuals with higher ex-ante optimism. Keywords: Expectations; Belief updating; COVID-19; Shutdown (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:209:y:2022:i:c:s0047272722000615 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104659 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier |
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