Did Economic Literacy Influence Macroeconomic Policy Preferences of the General Public during the Financial Crisis?

Brent Evans ()

The American Economist, 2015, vol. 60, issue 2, 132-141

Abstract: Based on survey data including residents of all fifty states, I provide an analysis on the relationship between economic education and policy recommendations of the American public during the financial crisis. Mirroring the methodological approach set forth in Walstad (1997), I find that economic literacy was correlated with three of the six policies studied. Specifically, economic literacy is positively correlated with support for decreased taxes and a smaller government, and negatively correlated with supporting a ceiling on CEO salaries. No other personal variable, including race, gender, income or educational attainment, is found to correlate with policy preferences as frequently as economic literacy. These findings corroborate with Walstad's results, which were based upon survey data compiled 18 years prior.

Keywords: economic education; financial crisis; public policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/056943451506000204 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:amerec:v:60:y:2015:i:2:p:132-141

DOI: 10.1177/056943451506000204

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The American Economist from Sage Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().