Pandemic Preferences: Voter Attitudes Towards COVID19 Central Bank Interventions (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: The World Under Financialization

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, central banks implemented extraordinary interventions to shore up asset and credit markets, alongside extraordinary fiscal measures taken by governments aimed at supporting household incomes and businesses. Central bank policies of this kind were highly controversial following the global financial crisis, with critics raising concerns that they worsened inequality and contributed to moral hazard. We hypothesize that the politicization of these measures is linked to rising financialization, as the economic fortunes of many households have become increasingly connected to credit and asset markets, while less financialized households remain more dependent on labour market income. We investigate the impact of this emerging socio-political cleavage on individual attitudes toward central bank policy interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We draw on a survey conducted in Australia and the United Kingdom in early 2021 that investigates how racial, partisan and other attitudes attenuate the support of financialized voters for expansionary monetary and financial policies during the COVID-related global economic crisis.

Authors

• Andrew Walter, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne

• Nicole Rae Baerg, Bank of England

• Jeffrey M. Chwieroth, London School of Economics