IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/germec/v20y2019i4pe1-e37.html

Public Preferences for Government Spending Priorities: Survey Evidence from Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Bernd Hayo
  • Florian Neumeier

Abstract

Employing data from a representative survey conducted in Germany, this paper examines public preferences for the size and composition of government expenditure. We focus on public attitudes towards taxes, public debt incurrence and public spending in six different policy areas. Our findings suggest, first, that individual preferences for the use of additional tax money can be categorised as either capital‐oriented expenditure or public debt reduction. Second, we find that fiscal preferences differ along various dimensions. Specifically, personal economic well‐being, economic literacy, confidence in politicians, political ideology and time preference are significantly related to individual attitudes towards public spending, taxes and debt. The magnitude of the effects is particularly large for time preference, economic knowledge and party preference. Third, public preferences for public spending priorities are only marginally affected when considering a public budget constraint.

Suggested Citation

  • Bernd Hayo & Florian Neumeier, 2019. "Public Preferences for Government Spending Priorities: Survey Evidence from Germany," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 20(4), pages 1-37, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:germec:v:20:y:2019:i:4:p:e1-e37
    DOI: 10.1111/geer.12149
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/geer.12149
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/geer.12149?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Massimo Bordignon & Nicolò Gatti & Gilberto Turati, 2025. "Are Citizens Willing to Reduce Public Debt? Beliefs, Information and Policy Preferences," CESifo Working Paper Series 12013, CESifo.
    2. Jan Behringer & Lena Draeger & Sebastian Dullien & Sebastian Gechert, 2024. "News and Views on Public Finances: A Survey Experiment," FMM Working Paper 97-2024, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    3. Israel García, 2023. "Budget Forecast Errors in Spanish Municipalities: The Role of Transparency," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202327, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    4. Markus Eller & Branimir Jovanovic & Thomas Scheiber, 2021. "What do people in CESEE think about public debt?," Focus on European Economic Integration, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue Q3/21, pages 35-58.
    5. Israel García & Bernd Hayo, 2023. "Fiscal Reform in Spanish Municipalities: Gender Differences in Budgetary Adjustment," CESifo Working Paper Series 10297, CESifo.
    6. Armin A. Bolouri & Tim Lohse & Salmai Qari, 2025. "Interdependent Preferences for Financing and Providing Public Goods—The Case of National Defense," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 78(3), pages 807-821, August.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General
    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:germec:v:20:y:2019:i:4:p:e1-e37. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.