Fiscal Beliefs & Narratives

Cars Hommes, Isabelle Salle and Julien Pinter
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Cars Hommes: University of Amsterdam
Isabelle Salle: University of Amsterdam
Julien Pinter: University of Alicante

No 26-031/VI, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: We conduct an experiment with educational content within a large-scale household survey on monetary finance. We identify prior narratives that respondents assign to this concept using open-ended questions analyzed with a large language model. Prior narratives are dominated by inflation concerns and ‘magic money’ views, with little reference to taxation. A central bank (CB) educational blogpost preceded by a short video clip on public finance robustly reduces support for monetary financing and shifts a broad set of related fiscal beliefs, including inflation concerns associated to this policy, support for fiscal discipline, and CB independence. These spillovers do not primarily operate through causal economic reasoning but may be suggestive of a broad application of a ‘fiscal seriousness’ mental model. Our findings indicate that CB communication can tackle even complex topics when it combines educational content with salient narrative framing that connects to existing beliefs.

Keywords: Large-scale household survey; educational information; RCT; narratives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C83 E58 E62 E70 G53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06-11
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260031

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