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Regulation and Distrust*
Abstract
We document that, in a cross section of countries, government regulation is strongly negatively correlated with measures of trust. In a simple model explaining this correlation, distrust creates public demand for regulation, whereas regulation in turn discourages formation of trust, leading to multiple equilibria. A key implication of the model is that individuals in low-trust countries want more government intervention even though they know the government is corrupt. We test this and other implications of the model using country- and individual-level data on trust and beliefs about the role of government, as well as on changes in beliefs during the transition from socialism.
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Citations
Cited by
The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa
Nunn, N., & Wantchekon, L. (2011) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.101.7.3221 · Cited by 2,197
Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.100.5.2060 · Cited by 1,286
Self-citationTrust, growth, and well-being: New evidence and policy implications
Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2014) · Handbook of Economic Growth · doi:10.1016/b978-0-444-53538-2.00002-2 · Cited by 454
Self-citationBehavioral development economics
Kremer, M., Rao, G., & Schilbach, F. (2019) · Handbook of Behavioral Economics: Applications and Foundations 1 · doi:10.1016/bs.hesbe.2018.12.002 · Cited by 188
Broadband Internet and social capital
Geraci, A., Nardotto, M., Reggiani, T., & Sabatini, F. (2022) · Journal of Public Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104578 · Cited by 89
Grimmelikhuijsen, S., de Vries, F., & Bouwman, R. (2024) · Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory · doi:10.1093/jopart/muad010 · Cited by 45
The Impact of Social Trust on the Development of Digital Finance
Zeng, F., & Hu, B. (2025) · International Journal of Financial Studies · doi:10.3390/ijfs13040232 · Cited by 6
Metadata
- Authors
- Aghion, P., Algan, Y., Cahuc, P., & Shleifer, A.
- Venue
- Quarterly Journal of Economics
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2010-08
- Volume
- 125
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 1015-1049
- ISSN
- 0033-5533 (ISSN-L)
- 1531-4650
- OpenAlex
- W4290805490
- Cited by
- 715
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 102.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
