Trust fund: regulation and corruption.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Citings - Brief article

A NEW PAPER from the National Bureau of Economic Research tries to answer a seemingly intractable question: Why do people in countries with especially corrupt governments consistently demand more government intervention, not less?

Economists Philippe Aghion of Harvard, Yann Algan of Sciences Po Paris, Pierre Cahuc of Ecole Polytechnique, and Andrei Shleifer of Harvard examined the coevolution of culture and institutions using the World Values Survey, a global poll that asks questions such as "Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people ?" and "Do you think that it is unjustifiable to cheat on government benefits?" Their findings suggest that there are two modes in which countries can...