IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sus/susewp/08416.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A survey of the UK population on public policy

Author

Listed:
  • Richard S.J. Tol

    (Department of Economics, University of Sussex,UK, Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Spatial Economic,UK, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

  • Peter Dolton

    (Department of Economics, University of Sussex,UK,Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics,UK,CESifo, Munich, Germany,IZA, Bonn, Germany)

Abstract

An online survey of over 12,000 UK residents was conducted with the aim of understanding: elements of public policy, preferences and knowledge of public expenditure, the provision of public goods, and the intergenerational allocation of resources. Questions were asked about demographics, wealth and income attitudes, time preferences, risk preferences, social value orientation, subjective personal assessments of life expectancy, perceptions of government spending, and public policies on health, education, pensions and climate change. This paper presents a simple description of the summary statistics from the survey. It does not, as yet, provides substantive analysis of the data.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard S.J. Tol & Peter Dolton, 2016. "A survey of the UK population on public policy," Working Paper Series 08416, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:sus:susewp:08416
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/economics/documents/wps-84-2016.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Corneo, Giacomo & Gruner, Hans Peter, 2002. "Individual preferences for political redistribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 83-107, January.
    2. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2014. "The Economic Importance of Financial Literacy: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(1), pages 5-44, March.
    3. Paul A. Samuelson, 1956. "Social Indifference Curves," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 70(1), pages 1-22.
    4. John Ifcher & Homa Zarghamee, 2011. "Happiness and Time Preference: The Effect of Positive Affect in a Random-Assignment Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3109-3129, December.
    5. Tomomi Tanaka & Colin F. Camerer & Quang Nguyen, 2010. "Risk and Time Preferences: Linking Experimental and Household Survey Data from Vietnam," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 557-571, March.
    6. Abram Bergson, 1954. "On the Concept of Social Welfare," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 68(2), pages 233-252.
    7. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Quang Nguyen & Colin Camerer & Tomomi Tanaka, 2010. "Risk and Time Preferences Linking Experimental and Household Data from Vietnam," Post-Print halshs-00547090, HAL.
    9. Shane Frederick, 2005. "Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 25-42, Fall.
    10. Luke Sibieta, 2015. "School Spending in England 2010–15," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 36, pages 283-302, September.
    11. Maarten J. Voors & Eleonora E. M. Nillesen & Philip Verwimp & Erwin H. Bulte & Robert Lensink & Daan P. Van Soest, 2012. "Violent Conflict and Behavior: A Field Experiment in Burundi," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 941-964, April.
    12. Benhabib, Jess & Bisin, Alberto & Schotter, Andrew, 2010. "Present-bias, quasi-hyperbolic discounting, and fixed costs," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 205-223, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Monica Novackova & Richard S.J. Tol, 2018. "Climate Change Awareness and Willingness to Pay for its Mitigation: Evidence from the UK," Working Paper Series 0318, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    2. Lahnaoui, Amin & Wulf, Christina & Heinrichs, Heidi & Dalmazzone, Didier, 2018. "Optimizing hydrogen transportation system for mobility by minimizing the cost of transportation via compressed gas truck in North Rhine-Westphalia," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 223(C), pages 317-328.
    3. Symeon Mavridis, 2018. "Greece’s Economic and Social Transformation 2008–2017," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-14, January.
    4. Peter Dolton & Richard S.J. Tol, 2019. "Correlates of Social Value Orientation: Evidence from a Large Sample of the UK Population," Working Paper Series 0119, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    5. Peter Dolton & Mehmet Kutluay & Richard S.J. Tol, 2019. "Attitudes Towards Public Health Spending: The Case of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom," Working Paper Series 0719, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    6. Iparraguirre, Jose Luis, 2020. "Reductions in local government spending on community-based social care and unmet social care needs of older people in England," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 17(C).
    7. Trotta, Gianluca, 2018. "The determinants of energy efficient retrofit investments in the English residential sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 175-182.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richard S.J. Tol & Peter Dolton, 2016. "A survey of the UK population on public policy," Working Paper Series 8416, Department of Economics, University of Sussex.
    2. Monica Novackova & Richard S.J. Tol, 2018. "Climate Change Awareness and Willingness to Pay for its Mitigation: Evidence from the UK," Working Paper Series 0318, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    3. Lucy F. Ackert & Richard Deaves & Jennifer Miele & Quang Nguyen, 2020. "Are Time Preference and Risk Preference Associated with Cognitive Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence?," Journal of Behavioral Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(2), pages 136-156, April.
    4. Victor Stango & Joanne Yoong & Jonathan Zinman, 2017. "The Quest for Parsimony in Behavioral Economics: New Methods and Evidence on Three Fronts," NBER Working Papers 23057, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jindrich Matousek & Tomas Havranek & Zuzana Irsova, 2022. "Individual discount rates: a meta-analysis of experimental evidence," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(1), pages 318-358, February.
    6. Freudenreich, Hanna & Musshoff, Oliver & Wiercinski, Ben, 2017. "The Relationship between Farmers' Shock Experiences and their Uncertainty Preferences - Experimental Evidence from Mexico," GlobalFood Discussion Papers 256212, Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen, GlobalFood, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development.
    7. Jonathan Chapman & Erik Snowberg & Stephanie Wang & Colin Camerer, 2018. "Loss Attitudes in the U.S. Population: Evidence from Dynamically Optimized Sequential Experimentation (DOSE)," NBER Working Papers 25072, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Ray Saadaoui Mallek & Mohamed Albaity, 2019. "Individual differences and cognitive reflection across gender and nationality the case of the United Arab Emirates," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 1567965-156, January.
    9. repec:hic:wpaper:204 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Matthew P. Taylor, 2017. "Information Acquisition Under Risky Conditions Across Real And Hypothetical Settings," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(1), pages 352-367, January.
    11. Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael & Ponti, Giovanni, 2017. "Social motives vs social influence: An experiment on interdependent time preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 177-194.
    12. Géraldine Bocqueho & Marc Deschamps & Jenny Helstroffer & Julien Jacob & Majlinda Joxhe & Ofce Observatoire Français Des Conjonctures Économiques, 2018. "The risk and refugee migration," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03607866, HAL.
    13. Lucks, Konstantin E. & Lührmann, Melanie & Winter, Joachim, 2020. "Assortative matching and social interaction: A field experiment on adolescents’ risky choices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 313-340.
    14. Jetter, Michael & Magnusson, Leandro M. & Roth, Sebastian, 2020. "Becoming sensitive: Males’ risk and time preferences after the 2008 financial crisis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    15. Stephen G Dimmock & Roy Kouwenberg & Olivia S Mitchell & Kim Peijnenburg, 2021. "Household Portfolio Underdiversification and Probability Weighting: Evidence from the Field," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(9), pages 4524-4563.
    16. Ute Rink & Theresa Rollwage, 2022. "Household disability and time preferences: Evidence from incentivized experiments in Vietnam," TVSEP Working Papers wp-027, Leibniz Universitaet Hannover, Institute of Development and Agricultural Economics, Project TVSEP.
    17. Mariam Raheem & Ain ul Momina, 2021. "Do Underlying Risk Preferences explain Individuals’ Cognitive Ability? Evidence from a Sample of Pakistani Students," Lahore Journal of Economics, Department of Economics, The Lahore School of Economics, vol. 26(1), pages 85-122, Jan-June.
    18. Ola Andersson & Håkan J. Holm & Jean-Robert Tyran & Erik Wengström, 2016. "Deciding for Others Reduces Loss Aversion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(1), pages 29-36, January.
    19. Victor Stango & Joanne Yoong & Jonathan Zinman, 2017. "Quicksand or Bedrock for Behavioral Economics? Assessing Foundational Empirical Questions," NBER Working Papers 23625, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Pamela Jakiela & Owen Ozier, 2019. "The Impact of Violence on Individual Risk Preferences: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(3), pages 547-559, July.
    21. Clark Gordon L, 2021. "The Significance of Financial Competence and Risk Tolerance in Home-Related Expenditure by Jurisdiction and Regime," ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography, De Gruyter, vol. 65(1), pages 12-27, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Survey; United Kingdom; discount rate; risk aversion; social value orientation; health; education; pensions; climate change; public policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:sus:susewp:08416. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: University of Sussex Business School Communications Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecsusuk.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.