Preferences for Education Spending

In a research project, we study whether support for higher education spending depends on current spending levels and the public's knowledge of them. In addition to data from the ifo Education Survey, the project also uses comparable US data from the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University. Randomized information provision in representative opinion surveys in both countries shows that support for increased education spending and teacher salaries falls among both Germans and Americans when respondents receive information about current spending levels. Effects of information provision on preferences for education spending are substantially larger for those respondents who had initially underestimated the level of current spending.

Additional research for Switzerland is in line with the evidence from Germany and the United States, suggesting that information provision has similar effects on policy preferences across countries. The few existing differences in policy preferences between countries can be rationalized with differences in the education systems.

Research papers:

How Information Affects Support for Education Spending: Evidence from Survey Experiments in Germany and the United States (with P. Lergetporer, G Schwerdt, K. Werner, and M.R. West). Journal of Public Economics 167: 138-157, 2018

Information Provision and Preferences for Education Spending: Evidence from Representative Survey Experiments in three Countries (with M. Cattaneo, P. Lergetporer, G. Schwerdt, K. Werner, and S.C. Wolter). European Journal of Political Economy 63: 101876, 2020

Non-technical contribution:

Section 4.1 in:

Public Opinion and the Political Economy of Educational Reforms: A Survey (with M. Busemeyer and P. Lergetporer). European Journal of Political Economy 53: 161-185, 2018