Trust, Regulation and Market Failures
研究发现，不同国家间信任水平的差异能解释大量监管差异，且控制信任后，监管与市场失灵的正相关消失，表明信任是影响监管需求的关键因素。
Government regulation of firms is associated with more negative externalities and unofficial activity across countries. I argue that this correlation mainly reflects causality going from concerns about market failures to demand for government intervention. Using trust in others as a proxy for such concerns, I show that differences in trust explain a great deal of variation in entry regulations. Then, controlling for trust in the regression of market failures on regulation, the latter is no longer associated with worse economic outcomes. The same result is confirmed when I exploit country population as an alternative source of variation in regulation. © 2012 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.