TY  - JOUR
AU  - Alesina,Alberto
AU  - Schuendeln,Nichola Fuchs
TI  - Good bye Lenin (or not?): The Effect of Communism on People's Preferences
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11700
PY  - 2005
Y2  - October 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11700
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11700.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alberto F. Alesina
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center 210
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-8388
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: aalesina@harvard.edu

Nicola Fuchs-Schuendeln
Goethe University Frankfurt
House of Finance
60323 Frankfurt
Germany
Tel: +49 69 798-33815
Fax: +49 69 798-33925
E-Mail: fuchs@wiwi.uni-frankfurt.de
AB  - Preferences for redistribution, as well as the generosities of welfare states, differ significantly across countries. In this paper, we test whether there exists a feedback process of the economic regime on individual preferences. We exploit the "experiment" of German separation and reunification to establish exogeneity of the economic system. From 1945 to 1990, East Germans lived under a Communist regime with heavy state intervention and extensive redistribution. We find that, after German reunification, East Germans are more in favor of redistribution and state intervention than West Germans, even after controlling for economic incentives. This effect is especially strong for older cohorts, who lived under Communism for a longer time period. We further find that East Germans' preferences converge towards those of West Germans. We calculate that it will take one to two generations for preferences to converge completely.
ER  -