Are citizens willing to reduce public debt? Beliefs, information and policy preferences

This paper investigates how raising awareness of public debt sustainability affects attitudes and policy preferences. In a survey experiment, we randomly assign an information treatment about government debt to a representative sample of the Italian population. Although the treatment makes respondents more sensitive to debt-related risks, the perceived urgency of debt reduction does not increase. Moreover, while remaining averse to taxes, respondents become more supportive of spending cuts. Our evidence that individuals with biased prior beliefs are not more responsive to the treatment highlights the behavioral challenges of building political support for debt-stabilizing policies by providing relevant and objective information.