Attitudes towards Euro Area Reforms: Evidence from a Randomized Survey Experiment

How do German voters feel about euro area reforms? In this working paper EconPol expert Mathias Dolls and co-author Nils Wehrhöfer find that few Germans are willing to accept fiscal risk-sharing through common unemployment insurance. But a majority supports a sovereign insolvency procedure aimed at strengthening market discipline. In their randomized surveys the authors also confronted survey participants with the potentially adverse effects of reforms, which lowered approval rates considerably. The survey results also revealed broad-based acceptance of inner German transfers, but low levels of support for transfers to other euro area member states.