TY  - JOUR
AU  - Blinder,Alan S.
AU  - Krueger,Alan B.
TI  - What Does the Public Know about Economic Policy, and How Does It Know It?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10787
PY  - 2004
Y2  - September 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10787
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10787.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alan S. Blinder
Department of Economics
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544-1021
Tel: 609/258-3358
Fax: 609/258-5398
E-Mail: blinder@princeton.edu

Alan B. Krueger
Industrial Relations Section
Firestone Library
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609/258-4046
Fax: 609/258-2907
E-Mail: akrueger@princeton.edu
AB  - Public opinion influences politicians, and therefore influences public policy decisions. What are the roles of self-interest, knowledge, and ideology in public opinion formation? And how do people learn about economic issues? Using a new, specially-designed survey, we find that most respondents express a strong desire to be well informed on economic policy issues, and that television is their dominant source of information. On a variety of major policy issues (e.g., taxes, social security, health insurance), ideology is the most important determinant of public opinion, while measures of self-interest are the least important. Knowledge about the economy ranks somewhere in between.
ER  -