TY - JOUR

T1 - Citizens' economic recovery models for a pandemic

AU - Olsen, Asmus Leth

AU - Woller, Anders

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic brought sudden economic devastation and forced countries to respond with policies to counter the looming economic crisis. What policy response do citizens prefer to combat an economic decline due to a pandemic? We study the preferences of citizens regarding economic policy and changes in these preferences as the pandemic unfolded in Denmark. Denmark passed early and comprehensive legislation with broad support from all political parties to counter the economic crisis caused by the pandemic. We employ a large nationally representative two-wave panel of Danish citizens (N = 12,131) drawn from the administrative registers, from which data was collected at the onset of the economic shock and immediately prior to economic recovery. In both waves the same subjects describe their preferred economic solution to COVID-19 in open-text format. We generate a simple dictionary method to uncover a set of distinct laymen economic policy responses. First, we find that citizens formulated a diverse set of policy interventions. Second, citizens become markedly stronger proponents of economic intervention as the crisis unfolded. Finally, we show how differences in economic preferences across partisanship vanished during the crisis.

AB - The COVID-19 pandemic brought sudden economic devastation and forced countries to respond with policies to counter the looming economic crisis. What policy response do citizens prefer to combat an economic decline due to a pandemic? We study the preferences of citizens regarding economic policy and changes in these preferences as the pandemic unfolded in Denmark. Denmark passed early and comprehensive legislation with broad support from all political parties to counter the economic crisis caused by the pandemic. We employ a large nationally representative two-wave panel of Danish citizens (N = 12,131) drawn from the administrative registers, from which data was collected at the onset of the economic shock and immediately prior to economic recovery. In both waves the same subjects describe their preferred economic solution to COVID-19 in open-text format. We generate a simple dictionary method to uncover a set of distinct laymen economic policy responses. First, we find that citizens formulated a diverse set of policy interventions. Second, citizens become markedly stronger proponents of economic intervention as the crisis unfolded. Finally, we show how differences in economic preferences across partisanship vanished during the crisis.

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0266531

DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0266531

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 36735669

VL - 18

JO - PLoS ONE

JF - PLoS ONE

SN - 1932-6203

IS - 2

M1 - 0266531

ER -