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All Keynesians now? Public support for countercyclical government borrowing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2019

Lucy Barnes Open the ORCID record for Lucy Barnes [Opens in a new window]  and
Timothy Hicks Open the ORCID record for Timothy Hicks [Opens in a new window]
Lucy Barnes
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University College London, LondonWC1H 9QU, UK
Timothy Hicks*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University College London, LondonWC1H 9QU, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Email: t.hicks@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, macroeconomic policy returned to the political agenda, and the influence of Keynesian ideas about fiscal stimulus rose (and then fell) in expert circles. Much less is known, however, about whether and when Keynesian prescriptions for countercyclical spending have any support among the general public. We use a survey experiment, fielded twice, to recover the extent to which UK respondents hold such countercyclical attitudes. Our results indicate that public opinion was countercyclical—Keynesian—in 2016. We then use Eurobarometer data to estimate the same basic parameter for the population for the period 2010–2017. The observational results validate our experimental findings for the later period, but also provide evidence that the UK population held procyclical views at the start of the period. Thus, there appear to be important dynamics in public opinion on a key macroeconomic policy issue.

Keywords

Economic policypolitical economypublic opinion
Type
Research Note
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 180 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2019

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