Cognitive Psychology and the Salience of Austerity

Good afternoon AltAusterity Readers! This week we bring you a presentation from Dr. Sorin Mitrea titled, "Cognitive Psychology and the Salience of Austerity". Sorin presented this paper at our conference in Berlin earlier this year and discussed the political context of austerity in Canada, and most interestingly, the cognitive foundations of 'common sense' ideas in policy and policy making. He uses the language of "dislodging" when suggesting approaches to understanding and improving upon these "stuck ideas".

He does note that in Canada, austerity is arguably less salient than it was in years Post-Financial Crisis, but impresses upon us that "public spending remains a perennial concern among the public, media, and policy makers despite evidence that austerity is harmful to growth and disproportionately hurts the disadvantaged".

You can find this presentation under 'Ideas & Advocacy' on our Research Page.

If you would like to see more from Sorin, check out his page on Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sorin_Mitrea2

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