Chloé de Meulenaer

Public economics, political economics, behavioural economics
c[dot]de-meulenaer[at]lse.ac.uk copy
/klo-eh duh mö-luh-nar/

I'm a PhD student in economics at the London School of Economics. My research lies at the intersection of public, behavioural, and political economics. I use custom surveys to explore the formation of policy preferences towards inequality reduction, and the mechanisms underlying those preferences.

I am especially interested in understanding the disconnect between the policies that economists identify as optimal, the policies that citizens support, and the policies that governments implement.

I am on the 2026/27 academic job market.

CV download

Job market paper

What do policies do? Beliefs and support for economic policies (paper coming soon)

Working papers

Equity or externalities: The redistributive debates in Norway and the United States with Morten Nyborg Støstad, Max Lobeck
WORKING PAPER

We use natural language processing to classify all redistributive speeches in the U.S. Congress and Norwegian parliament from 2015 to 2022. The Norwegian redistributive debate is markedly more pro-redistribution than the U.S. debate. While American legislators invoke fairness to argue for redistribution and efficiency to argue against it, the Norwegian debate does not align with the traditional equity-efficiency divide. Norwegian legislators often argue that inequality itself has socially inefficient consequences, such as lower trust, more crime, or weaker productivity (inequality externalities). In both settings, externality-based arguments are more likely to appeal to logic and consensus, while fairness arguments express more anger and compassion. In a U.S. survey experiment, fairness arguments induce more outrage but are not more convincing on average. Our results document two distinct ways to argue for redistribution, and suggest that the classic equity-efficiency dichotomy could be less universal than often assumed.

Attitudes towards the inheritance tax and demand for redistribution (working paper on request)

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 strong political polarization on the topic of the inheritance tax.

Work in progress

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

The income gradient of life expectancy: Belgium
Plotting the relationship between income and life expectancy in Belgium, as part of a large international project led by Maria Polyakova

Teaching

2022 LSE Class Teacher Awards: Highly Commended

London School of Economics

EC270 Public finance: Designing effective public policy (summer school) (2026) Lecturers Kate Smith, Pasquale Schiraldi

EC325 Public Economics (2024/26) Lecturers Camille Landais, Kate Smith Teaching evaluations 2024/25 AT (4.9/5) 2024/25 WT (4.9/5)

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

EC1A3 Introduction to Microeconomics (2021/23, 25/26)
Lecturer Ronny Razin Teaching evaluations 2021/22 AT (4.5/5) 2022/23 AT (4.7/5) 2025/26 AT (4.8/5)

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