Information and Public Opinion
A specific methodological feature of the ifo Education Survey is that we conduct survey experiments on some questions to study the effects of provided information on public opinion. In addition to the respective opinion question which is the same for all respondents, randomly selected subgroups of respondents receive specific information. Comparing responses between the subgroups allows us to determine the causal effect of the respective information on public opinion. Our scientific research using these survey experiments has covered topics including preferences for university tuition, educational inequality, education spending, and educational aspirations.
Non-technical contributions:
Public Opinion on Education Policy in Germany (with P. Lergetporer and K. Werner). In: M.R. West, L. Woessmann (eds.), Public Opinion and the Political Economy of Education Policy around the World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 205-243, 2021
Section 4 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
My most important academic papers on the topic are:
Income Contingency and the Electorate’s Support for Tuition (with P. Lergetporer). CESifo Working Paper 9520 / IZA Discussion Paper 14991, January 2022 [tweet]
Earnings Information and Public Preferences for University Tuition: Evidence from Representative Experiments (with P. Lergetporer). Journal of Public Economics 226: 104968, 2023 [tweet]
Educational Inequality and Public Policy Preferences: Evidence from Representative Survey Experiments (with P. Lergetporer and K. Werner). Journal of Public Economics 188: 104226, 2020
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
Does Ignorance of Economic Returns and Costs Explain the Educational Aspiration Gap? Representative Evidence from Adults and Adolescents (with P. Lergetporer and K. Werner). Economica 88 (351): 624-670, 2021 [tweet] [video]