Good Bye Lenin Revisited: East-West Preferences Three Decades After German Reunification

DOI

In this paper, we document that living under Communism vs. Capitalism has lasting effects on preferences for a strong government. Relying on the natural experiment of German reunification and extending the analysis of Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln (2007), we show that East Germans still have stronger preferences for redistribution than West Germans 27 years after reunification. While convergence of preferences occurs, the speed of convergence decreases significantly over time. Evidence from cohorts born after German reunification points towards significant intergenerational transmission of preferences.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.15456/ger.2023034.1142113842
Metadata Access https://www.da-ra.de/oaip/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifier=oai:oai.da-ra.de:776860
Provenance
Creator Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola; Bondar, Mariia
Publisher ZBW - Leibniz Informationszentrum Wirtschaft
Publication Year 2023
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY); Download
OpenAccess true
Contact ZBW - Leibniz Informationszentrum Wirtschaft
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Collection
Discipline Economics; Social and Behavioural Sciences