Abstract Employing data from a representative survey conducted in Germany, this paper examines public preferences for the size and composition of government expenditure. We focus on public attitudes towards taxes, public debt incurrence and public spending in six different policy areas. Our findings suggest, first, that individual preferences for the use of additional tax money can be categorised as either capital-oriented expenditure or public debt reduction. Second, we find that fiscal preferences differ along various dimensions. Specifically, personal economic well-being, economic literacy, confidence in politicians, political ideology and time preference are significantly related to individual attitudes towards public spending, taxes and debt. The magnitude of the effects is particularly large for time preference, economic knowledge and party preference. Third, public preferences for public spending priorities are only marginally affected when considering a public budget constraint.

中文翻译：

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政府优先考虑的公共偏好：来自德国的调查证据

摘要本文利用德国的一项代表性调查数据，研究了公众对政府支出规模和构成的偏好。我们关注六个不同政策领域中公众对税收，公共债务产生和公共支出的态度。我们的发现表明，首先，个人对使用额外税款的偏好可以归类为以资本为导向的支出或减少公共债务。其次，我们发现财政偏好在各个方面都不同。具体而言，个人的经济福祉，经济素养，对政客的信心，政治意识形态和时间偏好与个人对公共支出，税收和债务的态度密切相关。对于时间偏好，影响的大小特别大，经济知识和政党偏好。第三，仅在考虑公共预算约束时，才对公共支出优先级的公众偏好产生轻微影响。