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 

Here you can learn more about my research on this topic.

My most important academic papers on the topic are: 

Income Contingency and the Electorate’s Support for Tuition (with P. Lergetporer). Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, forthcoming [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]

My GESIS Lecture on "The Political Economy of Education Policy: Results from the ifo Education Survey":

My presentation on the effect of information provision on educational aspirations at the CEPA Seminar at Stanford University: 

Additional material is available in German.