We document that trust in public institutions--and particularly trust in banks, business and government--has declined … the most suffered the biggest loss in confidence in institutions, particularly in trust in government and the financial …

choice of a planner who knows the welfare achieved by each policy. This paper examines choice of size of government by a …Attempting to shed light on the optimal size of government, economists have analyzed planning problems that specify a … set of feasible taxation-spending policies and a social welfare function. The analysis characterizes the optimal policy …

We construct measures of the extent to which the 4 main newspapers in Argentina report government corruption in their … government advertising. The correlation is negative. The size is considerable: a one standard deviation increase in monthly … government advertising (0.26 million pesos of 2000) is associated with a reduction in the coverage of the government's corruption …

state bonds, which the Iraqi government is currently servicing, on world financial markets. After the Surge, there was a … it is paving the way for a stable Iraq. Selective, anecdotal and incomplete analyses abound. Policy makers and defense … markets' assessment of Iraq's future. The new and unusually rigorous findings presented here should help inform current …

about misconduct by government officials, so that, even when each complaint is unlikely to succeed, more frequent complaints … between education and the quality of government …

government's type is unknown and show that fiscal rules increase overborrowing if the central government's reputation is low. In … contrast, fiscal rules are effective in lowering debt if the central government's reputation is high. Even when the central … government's reputation is low, binding fiscal rules will arise in the equilibrium of a signaling game …

In a cross-section of countries, government regulation is strongly negatively correlated with social capital. We … model is that individuals in low trust countries want more government intervention even though the government is corrupt. We … government's role, as well as on changes in beliefs and in trust during the transition from socialism …