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...

We show the existence of a twin peaks relation between trust and the size of the welfare state that stems from two opposing forces. Uncivic people support large welfare states because they expect to benefit from them without bearing their costs. But civic individuals support generous benefits...

YannAlgan, Pierre Cahuc, Bruno Decreuse, François Fontaine, Solenne Tanguy Epargne de précaution, réseaux sociaux et assurance chômage publique. Cet article analyse les conséquences des systèmes publics d'assurance chômage lorsque les ménages peuvent disposer de méthodes alternatives...

We argue civic virtue plays a key role in explaining the design of public insurance against unemployment risks by solving moral hazard issues which hinder the efficiency of unemployment insurance. We show, in a simple model, that economies with stronger civic virtues are more prone to provide...

Can public policy interfere with culture, such as beliefs and norms of cooperation? We investigate his question by evaluating the interactions between the State and the Civil Society, focusing on the labor market. International data shows a negative correlation between union density and the...

Il existe un paradoxe français : celui d’un bonheur privé et d’un malheur public. Si les Français se disent relativement satisfaits de leur vie privée, et des solidarités familiales et de proximité, ils expriment, en revanche, une grande défiance envers le reste de la société. Ils...

This article analyses the impact of public employment creation on private sector employment and unemployement. In a macroeconomic approach, the first section focuses on the crowding out effects of public jobs creation on private jobs creation. The effect is found to be large and significant by...

In this paper we develop a new empirical approach to uncovering the impact of social attitudes on economic development. We first show that trust of second-generation Americans is significantly influenced by the country of origin of their forebears. In the spirit of the epidemiology literature,...