The political impact of inflation: a survey experiment

Neil Lee, Martina Pardy and Andrew Mcneil

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The early 2020s saw a spike in inflation across much of the advanced world, with pervasive economic consequences. There is strong evidence that economic shocks generally have political consequences, but few studies have specifically focused on inflation. In this paper, we address this gap using an original, pre-registered survey experiment in the United Kingdom, a country which saw the highest consumer price inflation in 40 years and a major cost of living crisis. First, we describe how individuals, on average, are only neutral in their confidence in the Bank of England’s and economists’ ability to tackle inflation. The population is even more pessimistic regarding the government’s abilities. Second, using an experimental survey vignette, we causally identify the effect of reminding and/or informing participants about the high levels of inflation. While our treatment shifts inflation expectations, we find no evidence that it reduces trust in government, the bank of England, nor economists more generally. Instead, we find weak evidence that respondents blame corporations. Inflation also makes citizens less likely to support public sector pay rises although we find no effect on authoritarianism, redistribution attitudes, attitudes towards overseas trade, or optimism towards the future.

Keywords: inflation; political attitudes; political trust; authoritarianism; survey experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D80 E31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-eec, nep-exp, nep-mon and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/123926/ Open access version. (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:ehl:lserod:123926

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().