Di Tella, Rafael; Dubra, Juan - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2006
We observe that countries where belief in the "American dream" (i.e., effort pays) prevails also set harsher punishment … their luck in the labor market, the expected punishment, and an individual shock that we call "meanness". It is this … meanness level that a penal system based on "retribution" tries to detect when deciding the severity of the punishment. We find …