The Politics of Macroeconomic Policies

The Great Recession dragged macroeconomic policies from the technocratic realm of “quiet politics” into the electoral realm of “noisy politics”. Still, comparative political economy has not adequately studied the politics of macroeconomic policies in the twenty-first century. It lacks a clear understanding of how the distributive consequences of different macroeconomic policies translate into political struggles over power and policies. This research project thus studies the political conflicts behind macroeconomic policies and growth models. It assumes that the economy is not isolated from electoral competition in liberal democracies and that different macroeconomic policies can be politically contested. Therefore, the project analyzes how economic interests are aggregated into political coalitions that rally around different economic policies. Specifically, it studies social and political conflicts over macroeconomic policies in the advanced economies and aims to answer three research questions: (1) To what extent are macroeconomic policies contested among voters? (2) How and why do different political actors support or oppose different macroeconomic policies? (3) How do these actors legitimize support for their preferred policies among voters?

Publications

• “The constrained politics of local public investments under cooperative federalism” (with Donato di Carlo, and Leon Wansleben). Socio-Economic Review, 2022.
  Preprint version / online appendix / MPIfG discussion paper

Working papers:

• “Public opinion towards growth strategies: Evidence from a new survey” (with Lucio Baccaro, Kostas Gemenis, and Erik Neimanns)
• “Covid Keynesianism and its trade-offs: Evidence from a survey experiment” (with Lucio Baccaro)
• “Much ado about debt? Understanding how people reason about debt (un)sustainability” (with Charlotte Cavaille, Catherine de Vries, and Lisanne de Blok)
• “The electoral consequences of centrist policies: Fiscal consolidations and the fate of social democratic parties”

Work in progress:

• “Quantitative easing and trust in central banks: Evidence from a natural experiment” (with Lucio Baccaro)
• “When central banking becomes costly: The politics of unconventional monetary policies and its trade-offs” (with Jeffrey Chwieroth)
• “What explains support for crisis policy interventions? Race, class, and wealth” (with Jeffrey Chwieroth and Andrew Walter)
• “Party favoritism and local public investment: Quasi-experimental evidence from Germany” (with Robin Hetzel)