Lorenz Meister

Populist parties use narratives about social injustice to portray climate policy as elite-driven and socially unjust. This study—based on a survey experiment with some 1,600 participants—examines how three common narratives about the costs associated with climate policy affect populist and climate-populist attitudes. The results show that the narrative highlighting the disproportionate burden on low-income households fuels climate-populist attitudes and undermines trust in democracy. This effect is particularly pronounced among women and low-income households as well as east German and conservative voter segments. The narrative portraying climate policy as harmful to the German economy, on the other hand, resonates most strongly with right-leaning voters, while the narrative claiming that businesses are failing to accept responsibility was found to fuel climate-populist attitudes primarily among male, east German, and left-leaning voters. Overall, the impact of narratives depends on a person’s individual circumstances and prior political experiences. Socially just and transparently communicated policies, however, can enhance public support for climate policy and help prevent populist exploitation.

The rise of populism challenges numerous Western democracies and their institutions. In this round-up, we examine economic and societal conditions that are driving forces behind populism. We focus on five domains that are closely interlinked with populist support: globalization, financial crises, migration, inequality, and social mobility. Each domain offers unique insights into how societal shifts, economic disruptions, and perceived injustices can fuel anti-establishment sentiments. As these factors collectively shape the political landscape, understanding their interplay becomes crucial in devising strategies to sustain and strengthen the stability of democracies and institutions.

In 2020, there were simultaneous increases in the number of private persons participating on the stock market as well as in the number of employees working from home. Indeed, working from home is a robust determinant of stock ownership and partially explains the increase in 2020, with households without children benefiting the most in this manner. Furthermore, the effect of working from home on stock ownership is largest for low-income earners. Thus, working more from home has complex distributional consequences: It tends to expand the stock owner base by, in a broader sense, decreasing the stock market participation cost. While economic policy should not mandate working from home for the sole purpose of increasing stock ownership, it can facilitate stock market participation in other ways, such as by improving financial education.

While there is a broad consensus in the literature that stock ownership is associated with individual characteristics, such as wealth, income, risk preferences, and financial literacy, less is known about the dynamics of stock market participation (SMP). Major fluctuations in SMP are oftentimes related to political events, economic shocks, and technological disruptions. We discuss the literature that investigates some of these shocks, as well as personal life circumstances that determine SMP across various demographic groups. Consolidating the literature allows us to identify systematic drivers into and out of stock ownership, along with its distributional consequences. Major forces behind SMP fluctuations are changes in participation costs and benefits, risk exposure, economic policy uncertainty, income uncertainty, peer effects, and windfall gains.

Dass Populismus global auf dem Vormarsch ist, scheinen die Wahlen in Argentinien und der Schweiz jüngst zu bestätigen. Doch es gibt auch andere Tendenzen, die Hoffnung machen: In Polen hat sich die Wählerschaft mehrheitlich gegen die rechtspopulistische Regierungspartei PiS ausgesprochen. Wie ist der weltweite Vormarsch des Populismus zu erklären? Vor allem die ökonomischen Ursachen sind mittlerweile gut erforscht. Kennt man erstmal die Ursachen, kann man sie in der Regel bekämpfen.