Constitutional verbosity and social trust

Christian Bjørnskov and Stefan Voigt

Public Choice, 2014, vol. 161, issue 1, 112 pages

Abstract: A common argument in the trust literature is that high-trust cultures allow efficient commercial contracts to be shorter, covering fewer contingencies. We take this idea to the topic of social contracts. Specifically, we ask whether social trust affects the length and detail of constitutions. Cross-country estimates suggest that national trust levels are indeed robustly and negatively associated with the length of countries’ constitutions. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Keywords: Constitutional political economy; Social trust; K40; Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11127-013-0129-z

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