Inflation narratives, political polarization and policy support

We study how newspaper narratives shape public beliefs and policy preferences during a period of high inflation in Germany 2021–2023. We conducted an online survey experiment with a broadly representative sample of 4,150 respondents, half of them randomly assigned to one of three inflation narrative treatments: 1) pent-up demand, 2) the energy-price crisis, or 3) corporate price gouging. We find strong baseline political polarization in support for inflation-mitigating policies, while respondents broadly agree on the distributional consequences of inflation. Pre-existing individual causal attributions about inflation correlate with inflation inequality beliefs and policy preferences but prove largely resistant to experimental updating, on average. Among right-leaning respondents, however, exposure to inflation narratives substantially increases support for redistributive and regulatory policies, reducing the baseline partisan gap by up to 80%. This effect is concentrated among respondents on the moderate right who identify with the AfD and exhibit low trust in government, suggesting that, when confronted with inflation as an economic problem, government skepticism is channeled into demand for stronger state protection.