 Cultural Differences Between East and West Germany After 1991: Communist Values vs. Economic Performance?André van Hoorn and Robbert Maseland Post-Print from HAL Abstract: Two decades after reunification substantial economic disparities between East and West Germany remain. With formal institutions being equalized, a typical explanation is that the partition of Germany created differences in economic values and attitudes that continue to feed differences in economic performance. Empirical work using values surveys to investigate the extent to which values differ between East and West has thus far produced mixed findings. We use individual-level panel data to assess East and West German value preferences by investigating how individuals from each group differentially transform situational factors into happiness. This novel method of assessing value differences shows that preferences indeed vary between East and West Germans. However, this variation is not in line with the differences associated with the gap in economic performance; if anything, Easterners appear to entertain values more conducive to economic growth. This suggests that the belief that economic differences between Eastern and Western Germany are a result of a Communist cultural legacy may be largely a myth. Keywords: values; economic performance; preferences; Germany; transition; convergence; I30; J29; P30; P51; Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2010, 76 (3), pp.791. ⟨10.1016/j.jebo.2010.10.003⟩ Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00911822 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2010.10.003 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
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