## Getting Into People's Heads

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**Canonical URL:** [Getting Into People's Heads](https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2022/09/pie-getting-into-people-heads-stefanie-stantcheva)

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## Bibliographic details
- Authors: Marjorie Henriquez
- Published: September 1, 2022

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### Overview
- Profile of Stefanie Stantcheva, Harvard economics professor, by Marjorie Henríquez, published in F&D Magazine, September 2022.
- Stantcheva uses large-scale socio-economic surveys and experiments to uncover information “invisible in traditional economic data” and to understand people’s perceptions, attitudes, knowledge, and notions of fairness regarding economic policy.
- Career and recognitions:
  - PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2014.
  - Age noted as 36.
  - Winner of the 2020 American Economic Association’s Elaine Bennett Research Prize.
  - First woman to join the editorial board of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

### Research methods and the Social Economics Lab
- Established the Social Economics Lab at Harvard in 2018.
- Lab composition:
  - Team of about 20 research fellows, including graduate and undergraduate students.
- Methods:
  - Large-scale surveys and experiments, often cross-country.
  - Emphasis on measuring perceptions, narratives, and fairness judgments that standard economic data do not capture.

### Key empirical findings
- General insights:
  - Perceptions—not objective inequality levels alone—shape support for redistribution.
  - Narratives and stories can be more effective than raw facts at changing views.
- Immigration and redistribution study (2018, with Alberto Alesina and Armando Miano):
  - Sample: 22,000 people surveyed in six countries—France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the UK, and the US.
  - Findings:
    - Respondents greatly overestimated the number of immigrants in all countries.
    - Respondents perceived immigrants as more unemployed, less educated, and economically weaker than reality.
    - These misperceptions led respondents to believe immigrants paid less in taxes and received a much larger share of government transfers than actually the case.
    - Misperceptions were largest among people with lower education, in lower-paid jobs, and in sectors that employ many immigrants; and across all countries, among people on the right of the political spectrum.
    - Prompting respondents to think about immigration before asking about redistribution reduced support for redistribution.
    - The two biggest predictors of reduced support for redistribution were:
      - The perception that immigrants “free-ride” and do not put in hard work.
      - The perception that immigrants are economically weak.
    - Providing factual information about immigrant numbers or origins did not shift redistribution views; telling a story about a hard-working immigrant did counter the free-rider narrative.
- Taxation and human capital:
  - 2017 study “Optimal Taxation and Human Capital Policies over the Life Cycle” analyzed interactions between tax and human capital policies over a person’s life span.
  - Conclusion: Income-contingent loans can allow people to finance higher education over a lifetime without exacerbating inequality, provided the system shares upside as well as protects during downturns.
  - Noted policy adoption: “nine or so countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, have adopted some form of income-contingent loans,” but these often protect borrowers in bad times without collecting more in good times; for optimal common-pool funding the system “must work both ways.”
- Climate policy attitudes:
  - Ongoing project surveying attitudes concerning climate change across 20 countries.
  - Early survey results: people’s views are shaped by who they think will bear the burden of paying for climate policy; perceptions that lower- or middle-income classes bear disproportionate burdens reduce acceptability.

### Policy implications and recommendations
- When crafting social-objective policies (for example, reducing inequality), economists need data on what people know, believe, and consider fair.
- Policy design should account for perceptions and narratives:
  - Facts alone may be insufficient to change public support; narratives that counter perceived free-rider stories can be effective.
- Education and communication strategies should focus on:
  - Who benefits and who bears costs, since notions of fairness—who the winners and losers are—drive much of public support.
- Example applied recommendation from Stantcheva and Dani Rodrik in the post-COVID commission work:
  - Pay attention to how trade policies affect local labor markets.
  - After a deliberative domestic process, consider restricting imports produced under conditions that violate labor rights abroad and threaten jobs or working conditions at home.

### Ongoing and recent projects
- Studying how the general property tax in the US shaped economic development in the 19th century.
- Studying the impact of France’s wealth tax on tax evasion and wealth.
- Extending research on perceptions of climate policy across 20 countries.
- Published a note for the French Council of Economic Analysis on French people’s attitudes about climate policies.

### Teaching, mentorship, and legacy
- Prioritizes teaching and coaching graduate and undergraduate students; colleagues note care and engagement with students.
- After the May 2020 death of Alberto Alesina, Stantcheva “in a very natural way has stepped up to the role that Alberto used to have” and has worked to keep his legacy alive.
- Actively presenting findings to policymakers and advising advisory bodies (member of the French Council of Economic Analysis); her research is discussed with great interest in the context of the “gilets jaunes crisis.”

*Source: “Getting Into People's Heads,” Marjorie Henríquez, F&D Magazine, September 2022.*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2022/09/pie-getting-into-people-heads-stefanie-stantcheva_