Speaking of Debt: Framing, Guilt, and Economic Choices

Cevat Giray Aksoy, Mathias Dolls, Justyna Klejdysz, Andreas Peichl and Lisa Windsteiger

No 20588, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper is the first to causally identify the effect of language on attitudes and behaviors toward debt. Using observational data, randomized survey experiments, incentivized borrowing-to-invest decisions, and textual analyses, we show that the moral connotations inherent in debt-related language influence how individuals, firms, and policymakers perceive borrowing. In several languages, including German, Dutch, and Swedish, the standard term for “debt†also connotes “guilt.†Leveraging this semantic overlap, we conduct survey experiments embedded in three household surveys across seven countries and one business survey. By randomizing debt-related wording, we find that guilt-connoted language significantly reduces individuals’ willingness to borrow, their approval of public debt, and debt-financing plans among firm managers. This effect extends to an incentivized experiment, in which guilt-laden wording significantly reduces both the probability of borrowing and the amount borrowed. To complement the experimental results, we analyze three decades of German parliamentary speeches and find that politicians who oppose public debt systematically use guilt-connoted terms. A similar pattern emerges in financial advertising: guilt-laden language is concentrated in debt-relief campaigns, while neutral terminology dominates transactional promotions. Together, our findings demonstrate that moral connotations embedded in language shape economic behavior and are strategically employed in political and commercial discourse.

JEL-codes: D83 G51 H63 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP20588 (application/pdf)

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:cpr:ceprdp:20588

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP20588

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().