When Are Monetary Policy Preferences Egocentric? Evidence from American Surveys and an Experiment.

This article enters the international/comparative political economy debate about whether individual-level macroeconomic policy preferences are egocentric and, if so, on what basis (factors, sectors, or firms). It argues that contextual information may function as a precondition for the emergence of egocentric preferences. With a focus on the trade-off between using monetary policy for a domestic or an international goal, it presents evidence from three original American surveys using informative vignettes to show how monetary policy preferences exhibit firm-based egocentric variation: Individuals whose employer does most of its business in overseas markets have a lesser preference for domestic monetary autonomy. It also presents evidence from a survey experiment to show how the strength of this egocentric relationship depends on the informative power of the vignette: A more contextually informative vignette produces a stronger relationship between overseas business activity and a preference against domestic monetary autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]