IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/diw/diwsop/diw_sp345.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Different Look at Lenin's Legacy: Trust, Risk, Fairness and Cooperativeness in the Two Germanies

Author

Listed:
  • Guido Heineck
  • Bernd Süssmuth

Abstract

What are the long-term effects of Communism on economically relevant notions such as social trust? To answer this question, we use the reunification of Germany as a natural experiment and study the post-reunification trajectory of convergence with regard to individuals' trust and risk, as well as perceived fairness and cooperativeness. Our hypotheses are derived from a model of German reunification that incorporates individual responses both to incentives and to values inherited from earlier generations as recently suggested in the literature. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we find that despite twenty years of reunification East Germans are still characterized by a persistent level of social distrust. In comparison to West Germans, they are also less inclined to see others as fair or helpful. Implied trajectories can be interpreted as evidence for the passing of cultural traits across generations and for cooperation being sustained by values rather than by reputation. Moreover, East Germans are found to be more risk loving than West Germans. In contrast to trust and fairness, full convergence in risk attitude is reached in recent years.

Suggested Citation

  • Guido Heineck & Bernd Süssmuth, 2010. "A Different Look at Lenin's Legacy: Trust, Risk, Fairness and Cooperativeness in the Two Germanies," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 345, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
  • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp345
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.366340.de/diw_sp0345.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 159-181, Summer.
    2. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2009. "Homo Reciprocans: Survey Evidence on Behavioural Outcomes," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(536), pages 592-612, March.
    3. Bernd Süssmuth & Malte Heyne & Wolfgang Maennig, 2010. "Induced Civic Pride and Integration," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 72(2), pages 202-220, April.
    4. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann & Christian Thoeni, 2010. "Culture and Cooperation," Discussion Papers 2010-09, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Interesting readings
      by Ajay Shah in Ajay Shah's blog on 2010-10-11 10:01:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Guido Heineck & Bernd Süßmuth, 2011. "Wie nachhaltig prägen uns politische Systeme? Evidenz aus der zweiten Dekade des Wiedervereinigungsprozesses," ifo Dresden berichtet, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 18(02), pages 23-26, April.
    2. Andreas Kuhn, 2011. "Inequality Perceptions, Distributional Norms, and Redistributive Preferences in East and West Germany," NRN working papers 2011-15, The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    3. Schnabel Claus, 2016. "United, Yet Apart? A Note on Persistent Labour Market Differences between Western and Eastern Germany," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 236(2), pages 157-179, March.
    4. Hennighausen, Tanja, 2015. "Exposure to television and individual beliefs: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 956-980.
    5. Triebs, Thomas & Tumlinson, Justin, 2014. "Learning Capitalism The Hard Way: Evidence From Germany's Reunification," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100457, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Thomas P. Triebs & Justin Tumlinson, 2013. "Learning to Forecast the Hard Way—Evidence from German Reunification," NBER Working Papers 19209, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Leuermann, Andrea & Necker, Sarah, 2011. "Intergenerational transmission of risk attitudes: A revealed preference approach," Freiburg Discussion Papers on Constitutional Economics 11/4, Walter Eucken Institut e.V..
    8. Andrea Leuermann & Sarah Necker, 2011. "Intergenerational Transmission of Risk Attitudes: A Revealed Preference Approach," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 412, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    9. Kuhn, Andreas, 2011. "Inequality Perceptions, Distributional Norms, and Redistributive Preferences in East and West Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 5573, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Heineck, Guido & Süssmuth, Bernd, 2013. "A different look at Lenin’s legacy: Social capital and risk taking in the Two Germanies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 789-803.
    2. Adrian Bruhin & Ernst Fehr & Daniel Schunk, 2019. "The many Faces of Human Sociality: Uncovering the Distribution and Stability of Social Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 1025-1069.
    3. Sauermann, Jan, 2015. "Worker Reciprocity and the Returns to Training: Evidence from a Field Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 9179, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Sun-Ki Chai & Dolgorsuren Dorj & Katerina Sherstyuk, 2018. "Cultural Values and Behavior in Dictator, Ultimatum, and Trust Games: An Experimental Study," Research in Experimental Economics, in: Experimental Economics and Culture, volume 20, pages 89-166, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    5. Heineck, Guido & Anger, Silke, 2010. "The returns to cognitive abilities and personality traits in Germany," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 535-546, June.
    6. Uwe Jirjahn & Vanessa Lange, 2015. "Reciprocity and Workers’ Tastes for Representation," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 188-209, June.
    7. Almlund, Mathilde & Duckworth, Angela Lee & Heckman, James & Kautz, Tim, 2011. "Personality Psychology and Economics," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & Stephen Machin & Ludger Woessmann (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 1-181, Elsevier.
    8. Cuesta, Maite Blázquez & Budría, Santiago, 2017. "Unemployment persistence: How important are non-cognitive skills?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 29-37.
    9. Panos, Georgios & Theodossiou, Ioannis, 2009. "Union Mediation and Adaptation to Reciprocal Loyalty Arrangements," MPRA Paper 15471, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Raymond Montizaan & Andries de Grip & Frank Cörvers & Thomas Dohmen, 2016. "The Impact of Negatively Reciprocal Inclinations on Worker Behavior: Evidence from a Retrenchment of Pension Rights," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(3), pages 668-681, March.
    11. Schneck, Stefan, 2014. "My Wage is Unfair! Just a Feeling or Comparison with Peers?," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 1(3), pages 245-273, May.
    12. Dur, Robert & Non, Arjan & Roelfsema, Hein, 2010. "Reciprocity and incentive pay in the workplace," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 676-686, August.
    13. Han, Hua-Jing & Wibral, Matthias, 2020. "Organ donation and reciprocity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    14. Eugen Dimant & Michele Gelfand & Anna Hochleitner & Silvia Sonderegger, 2022. "Strategic Behavior with Tight, Loose and Polarized Norms," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 198, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    15. Kira Rupietta & Michael Beckmann, 2018. "Working from Home," Schmalenbach Business Review, Springer;Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft, vol. 70(1), pages 25-55, February.
    16. Dohmen, Thomas, 2014. "Behavioral labor economics: Advances and future directions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    17. Englmaier, Florian & Strasser, Sebastian & Winter, Joachim, 2014. "Worker characteristics and wage differentials: Evidence from a gift-exchange experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 185-203.
    18. Non, Arjan, 2018. "Training participation and the role of reciprocal attitudes," Research Memorandum 024, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    19. Timothy Besley, 2020. "State Capacity, Reciprocity, and the Social Contract," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(4), pages 1307-1335, July.
    20. Eugen Dimant & Michele Gelfand & Anna Hochleitner & Silvia Sonderegger, 2023. "Strategic Behavior with Tight, Loose and Polarized Norms," CESifo Working Paper Series 10233, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social trust; risk attitudes; political regimes; German reunification;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • P51 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. SOEP based publications

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp345. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sodiwde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.