Economic expectations under the shadow of party polarization: Evidence from 135 government changes

Abstract

I study the behavior of economic expectations under political polarization. Using microdata spanning 27 countries over three decades, I follow a difference-in-differences design exploiting 135 government changes to identify the differential update of expectations along partisan lines. I then show that this difference is stronger in more polarized settings; in fact, 57% of its variation can be accounted for by the polarization of political parties. The resulting gap in supporters’ expectations cannot be rationalized as reflecting expectations about the government’s economic policy, suggesting instead that political (non-economic) conflicts contaminate economic expectations.