Chloé de Meulenaer

c[dot]de-meulenaer[at]lse.ac.uk copy
/kk as in keepll as in labouroo as in story'ee as in major dd as in dayəə as in above mm as in meanøø as in Goethe in Germanll as in labourəə as in abovenn as in new'ɑɑ as in farʁʁ as in Paris in French/

I'm a PhD student at the London School of Economics under the supervision of Camille Landais and Johannes Spinnewijn.

My research lies at the intersection of public, behavioural, and political economics. I use custom surveys to explore the formation of policy preferences towards redistribution and the mechanisms underlying those preferences.

I am particularly interested in exploring the disconnect between the set of policies that find public support, and those deemed optimal by economic models.

CV download

Work in progress

Attitudes towards the inheritance tax and demand for redistribution

I use new survey data from France to explore attitudes towards the inheritance tax and demand for redistribution. Although the inheritance tax is very unpopular, respondents show significant support for redistributive forms of taxation, namely for taxing capital income and the bequests of parents who have themselves inherited. I also find that a large share of the variation in support for the inheritance tax is explained by whether participants believe that taxes mostly enhance fairness or harm the economy. This suggests that some respondents' apparently low demand for redistribution may stem from their lack of trust in the power of taxes to effectively redistribute. I then analyze how these preferences shift when exposed to two arguments: one highlighting wealth inequality, the other defending parents' right to bequeath their hard-earned savings. The inequality argument increases support for the inheritance and capital income taxes. Surprisingly, the second argument also increases support for the capital income tax and mildly increases support for the inheritance tax. I interpret this last finding as evidence of backfiring, echoing the strong political polarization on the topic of the inheritance tax.

Comparing universes of redistributive arguments
with Morten Nyborg Støstad

What are the properties of different types of redistributive arguments? We collect a large set of pro-redistribution arguments based on either fairness ideas or inequality's societal consequences and evaluate the average efficacy and emotional content of each type of argument. We collect arguments in a first survey, quality-check them in a second survey, and evaluate them in a third survey. This method allows us to evaluate an unbiased approximation of the "universe" of each type of argument. Our final data set has 32,300 argument evaluations across 160 redistributive arguments, 80 of each type. While both types of arguments are generally convincing, fairness arguments are relatively more convincing for low-income respondents. All respondents report significantly more anger in reaction to fairness arguments, which is largely driven by the average fairness argument having more emotional content.

Perceptions of tax evasion and tax enforcement
with Daniel Reck

Peer effects and insurance choice quality
with Johannes Spinnewijn, Ben Handel, and Jon Kolstad

Teaching

2022 LSE Class Teacher Awards: Highly Commended

London School of Economics

EC325 Public Economics (2024/25) Lecturers Camille Landais, Kate Smith Teaching evaluations 2024/25 AT (4.9/5)

EC1A1 Microeconomics I (2021/23) Lecturer Dimitra Petropoulou Teaching evaluations 2021/22 (4.8/5) 2022/23 (4.8/5)

EC1A3 Introduction to Microeconomics (2021/23)
Lecturer Ronny Razin Teaching evaluations 2021/22 (4.5/5) 2022/23 (4.7/5)

Université Libre de Bruxelles

ECONS1001 Microeconomics I (2016/18) Lecturers Julien Ravet, Renaud Foucart

ECONS102 Introduction to Macroeconomics (2015/18) Lecturer Pierre-Guillaume Méon

MATHS101 Mathematics I (2015/18) Lecturer Marjorie Gassner