Questions and answers about
the economy.

Belief change to market economy or planned economy? shock from Covid-19

Covid-19 has caused panic buying, temporary supply shortage and soaring prices. The Chinese government has formulated restrictive policies to guide the market order. We are curious whether the epidemic had an impact on the belief in the economic system or not, and moreover it would strengthen the belief in market economy or planned economy. We designed a single decision-making experiment based "the intervention of economic explanation" via online questionnaire. On the analysis of the investigation results, three conclusions are found. Firstly, although people generally support the market controlling measures during the epidemic diseases, they still hold the belief in market economy as a whole. Secondly, in the regions with more serious epidemic infection, the probability of belief in planned economy has increased. Thirdly, economic explanation has significant influence on the belief distribution, specifically, the group who was randomly distributed the questionnaire with the market economy interpretation has higher market economy belief probability, while the group who was randomly distributed the questionnaire with the planned economy interpretation has higher planned economy belief probability. These experimental results show that the Covid-19 did not change the confidence of Chinese people in the economic system with Chinese characteristics. It also shows that it is of great significance for the government to publicize economic policies while formulating relevant economic policies.

Lead investigator:

Naixi Liu

Affiliation:

Department of International Economics, China Foreign Affairs University

Primary topic:

Attitudes, media & governance

Region of data collection:

Asia and Oceania

Country of data collection

China

Status of data collection

Complete

Type of data being collected:

Online survey

Unit of real-time data collection

Individual

Start date

4/2020

End date

4/2020

Frequency

One-off