Crisis of confidence? The dynamics of economic opinions during the Great Recession

This chapter examines the dynamics of public opinion about the economy before, during, and after the Great Recession of 2008 across 11 European countries. Specifically, using monthly public opinion data, the chapter describes the nature of opinion change resulting from turmoil in the global economy and investigates whether the nature of the change and opinion were shaped by macro-level political and economic factors, including the size of welfare states.