The (True) Legacy of Two Really Existing Economic Systems
Munich Discussion Paper No. 2014-26
26 Pages Posted: 22 Jun 2014 Last revised: 30 Apr 2015
Date Written: March 19, 2015
Abstract
By running an experiment among Germans collecting their passports or ID cards in the citizen centers of Berlin, we find that individuals with an East German family background cheat significantly more on an abstract task than those with a West German family background. The longer individuals were exposed to socialism, the more likely they were to cheat on our task. While it was recently argued that markets decay morals (Falk and Szech, 2013), we provide evidence that other political and economic regimes such as socialism might have an even more detrimental effect on individuals’ behavior.
Keywords: experimental economics, cheating, cross-culture study
JEL Classification: C93, D63, P51
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation