the most suffered the biggest loss in confidence in institutions, particularly in trust in government and the financial …We document that trust in public institutions - and particularly trust in banks, business and government - has declined … over recent years. U.S. time series evidence suggests that this partly reflects the pro-cyclical nature of trust in …

economic fundamentals, in the evolution of government size. We proceed by asking whether the data allow us to distinguish …

relationship between fiscal decentralization and the size of government. An econometric analysis using panel data from 18 OECD … countries shows that fiscal decentralization matters for both the size and composition of government spending. Tax revenue … driven by increased government consumption. …

We examine the effect of population size on government size for a panel of 130 countries for the period between 1970 … and 2014. We show that previous analyses of the nexus between population size and government size are incorrectly … on government size. This finding suggests that effects of population size that increase government size (primarily due to …

people's desire for greater economic security can be realized through government spending. Empirical evidence for 143 …. Exploring areas of public spending, we find intuitive patterns: Consistent with the compensation hypothesis, government spending …

political economics. The more fragmented a government, the higher its spending, deficits and debt. In this paper we investigate … constitutional rules for executive and legislation as well as budget rules shape the size of government and how the different rules … interact with fragmentation in determining government size. The empirical study of the role of fragmented governments for …

, in turn, new populist parties that offer more polarized platforms. I investigate whether government ideology influences … evaluating how government/party ideology influences individual policies, previous econometric studies ignored initiatives in …

individual’s “impressionable years” (ages 18 to 25) has a persistent negative effect on confidence in political institutions and … confidence in public health systems, suggesting that the loss of confidence in political institutions and leaders is associated … with the (in)effectiveness of a government’s healthcare-related responses to past epidemics. We document this mechanism …

We study the interplay of inequality and trust in a dynamic game, in which trust increases efficiency and thus allows … higher growth of the experimental economy in the future. We find that trust is initially high in a treatment starting with … equal endowments, but decreases over time. In a treatment with unequal endowments, trust is initially lower yet remains …