The Impact of Trust on Reforms

Friedrich Heinemann and Benjamin Tanz

No 08-053, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: In a constantly changing economic environment a country's ability to undertake institutional reforms is crucial to maintain economic growth and to promote the welfare of its citizens. A wide range of determinants for institutional reforms have been identified. However, the impact of trust on reforms has so far never been addressed. We provide theoretical arguments why trust should influence institutional changes and test the relationship empirically. We find a significant positive relation between trust and reforms with regard to government size, the legal system, and deregulation of private businesses and the labor market. The results in other policy fields are ambiguous.

Keywords: Trust; Economic Freedom; Policy Reforms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E60 H11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-mac, nep-pol, nep-reg and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (55)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/24749/1/dp08053.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of trust on reforms (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:7376

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().