The impact of experience on how we perceive the rule of law

Benito Arruñada

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: Experience is a major source of knowledge. Could institutions be improved by eliciting the additional knowledge held by experienced individuals? I show here that in several areas of the law experienced individuals are more critical of institutional quality than inexperienced individuals. Moreover, performance indexes built with experienced subsamples substantially alter country rankings. Assuming no unmeasured confounders, more knowledge arguably leads experienced individuals to revise the more benign view held by the general population, composed mostly of inexperienced individuals. Moreover, experience is a stronger driver than alternative sources of knowledge, including education, which might therefore be reinforcing milder and, arguably, incorrect assessments of institutional quality. After observing how this “experience effect†varies systematically across countries, I conclude by proposing that evaluations of institutional quality pay greater attention to experienced individuals and cautioning against basing inferences on assessments made by the general population.

Keywords: Institutions; experience; knowledge; perception; rule of law; measurement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 D71 D83 K12 K14 K31 K32 K41 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-11, Revised 2020-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-law
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Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of experience on how we perceive the rule of law (2020)
Working Paper: The Impact of Experience on How we Perceive the Rule of Law (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:upf:upfgen:1683

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