Suchergebnisse

How do global political shocks influence individuals' expectations about economic outcomes? We run a unique survey on inflation expectations among 145 tenured economics professors in Germany and exploit the 2022 Russian invasion in Ukraine as a natural experiment to identify the effect of a global political shock on expectations about national inflation rates. We find that the Russian invasion increased short-run inflation expectations for 2022 by 0.75 percentage points. Treatment effects are smaller regarding mid-term expectations for 2023 (0.47 percentage points) and are close to zero for longer periods. Comparing the results to a representative sample of households, we find that the treatment effects are twice as large for experts than for households. Text analysis of open questions shows that experts increase their inflation expectations because they expect supply-side effects to become increasingly important after the invasion. Moreover, we find that the treatment substantially changed monetary policy recommendations.

This paper investigates the major drivers of governmental redistribution. Extended and harmonised data on effective redistribution recently provided by the newest version of the Standardized World Income Inequality Database allows for the assessment of the origins of governmental redistribution for a broad sample of countries. Our findings confirm the Meltzer-Richard hypothesis, pointing to a robust positive relationship between market inequality and redistribution. We show that perceptions of inequality are often biased and that the redistribution-enhancing effect of gross inequality is even stronger when individuals are aware of national income disparities. The results also suggest that top income shares tend to impede redistributive policies.

Die Studie untersucht den Zusammenhang zwischen Staatsverschuldung, Maßnahmen zur Konsolidierung öffentlicher Haushalte und Wirtschaftswachstum. Ein besonderes Augenmerk liegt auf der Zusammensetzung des öffentlichen Budgets und der damit verbundenen Frage, welche Ausgabenveränderungen sich im Rahmen von Konsolidierungsmaßnahmen eher positiv oder negativ auf die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung auswirken. Die deskriptive Analyse zeigt, dass Deutschland im Vergleich zu anderen EU-Mitgliedsstaaten einen überdurchschnittlich hohen Anteil seines öffentlichen Budgets für die soziale Sicherung und das Gesundheitswesen aufbringt. Die relativen Ausgaben für das Bildungs- und Transportwesen, Umweltschutz sowie die Verteidigung sind hingegen geringer als in vergleichbaren europäischen Ländern. Die empirische Analyse zeigt, dass Staatsverschuldung und Wirtschaftswachstum negativ korreliert sind, und dass eine Konsolidierung der Haushalte über Ausgabenkürzungen aus Wachstumsgesichtspunkten einer Konsolidierung über Steuererhöhungen vorzuziehen ist. Besonders konsumtive Ausgaben sind negativ mit Wachstum korreliert und bieten daher Spielraum für wachstumsfreundliche Konsolidierung. Positiv mit Wachstum korreliert sind vor allem Ausgaben für Forschung und Entwicklung sowie tendenziell Ausgaben für das Bildungswesen.

Das 38. Ökonomenpanel von ifo und FAZ, an dem 145 Professorinnen und Professoren teilnahmen, widmet sich der Inflation. Für Deutschland erwarten die Ökonominnen und Ökonomen im Durchschnitt eine Inflationsrate von 4,4% für das Jahr 2022. Dieser Wert sinkt für das Jahr 2023 auf 3,4% und für das Jahr 2026 auf 2,8%. Als Ursache für die aktuell deutlich erhöhte Inflation werden die hohen Energie- und Rohstoffpreise, Lieferengpässe und die Geldpolitik genannt. Um die Inflation zu senken, sprechen sich drei Viertel der Teilnehmenden für sofortige Maßnahmen durch die EZB aus. Als sinnvolle Maßnahme sehen die Ökonominnen und Ökonomen Leitzinserhöhungen. Bis Ende des Jahres sollte der Leitzins ihrer Meinung nach im Durchschnitt auf 1% angehoben werden.

We use the US presidential election on 3 November 2020 to examine how the US president influences economic expectations of international experts. We design a large-scale RCT among 843 experts working in 107 countries, asking about their expectations regarding GDP growth, unemployment, inflation, and trade in their country. The sample is split randomly in two subsamples. Half of the participants were surveyed closely before the election, the other half directly after Joe Biden had been called US president. Our results show that the election of Joe Biden increased growth expectations of international experts by 0.98 percentage points for the year 2021. We also find that (i) treatment effects materialize only in the short-run and (ii) experts' uncertainty increased after the election. Our results suggest that exceptional politicians influence global economic outcomes.

We examine partisan bias in inflation expectations. Our dataset includes inflation expectations of the New York Fed's Survey of Consumer Expectations over the period June 2013 to June 2018. The results show that inflation expectations were 0.46% points higher in Republican-dominated than in Democratic-dominated US states when Barack Obama was US president. Compared to inflation expectations in Democratic-dominated states, inflation expectations in Republican-dominated states declined by 0.73% points when Donald Trump became president. We employ the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition method to disentangle the extent to which political ideology and other individual characteristics predict inflation expectations: around 25% of the total difference between inflation expectations in Democratic-dominated versus Republican-dominated states is based on how partisans respond to changes in the White House's occupant (partisan bias). The results also corroborate the belief that voters' misperceptions of economic conditions decline when the president belongs to the party that voters support.

We introduce a new dataset that includes quantitative harmonized indices of tax reforms based on qualitative information of about 900 Economic Surveys from the OECD and 37,000 tax-related news from the IBFD archives. The data set provides indicators on tax reforms for tax rates and tax bases, along with detailed sub-indices for six types of taxes (23 countries, 1960–2014). Relating tax reforms to the timing of elections, we examine electoral cycles in tax reforms. Our results show that politicians postpone tax rate increases to after elections. A key innovation of our data set is the coverage of harmonized indices for six tax types. Examining heterogeneity across tax types, we find that electoral cycles are particularly pronounced for value added tax rates and personal income tax rates.

We use the US presidential election on 3 November 2020 to examine how the US president influences economic expectations of international experts. We design a large-scale RCT among 843 experts working in 107 countries, asking about their expectations regarding GDP growth, unemployment, inflation, and trade in their country. The sample is split randomly in two subsamples. Half of the participants were surveyed closely before the election, the other half directly after Joe Biden had been called US president. Our results show that the election of Joe Biden increased growth expectations of international experts by 0.98 percentage points for the year 2021. We also find that (i) treatment effects materialize only in the short-run and (ii) experts' uncertainty increased after the election. Our results suggest that exceptional politicians influence global economic outcomes.