The Long-Term Costs of Government Surveillance: Insights from Stasi Spying in East Germany

Lichter, Andreas; Löffler, Max; Siegloch, Sebastian

doi:10.1093/jeea/jvaa009

Cited by 76 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 60 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Besides the broader innovation literature, our paper also contributes to the literature studying the social and economic consequences of covert activities and secrecy. In a recent study, Lichter, Löffler and Siegloch (2016) exploit discontinuities at state borders within East Germany to show that higher levels of Stasi surveillance during the 1980s led to lower levels of social capital and worse economic outcomes in the post-unification period, confirming earlier cross-sectional results by Jacob and Tyrell (2010) and Friehe, Pannenberg and Wedow (2015). These papers thus focus on another main activity of the Stasi, the mass surveillance of East Germany's own citizens.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 70%

Industrial Espionage and Productivity

Glitz

Meyersson²

2020

American Economic Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper, we investigate the economic returns to industrial espionage. We show that the flow of information provided by East German informants in the West over the period 1970–1989 led to a significant narrowing of sectoral TFP gaps between West and East Germany. These economic returns were primarily driven by relatively few high-quality pieces of information and particularly large in sectors closer to the West German technological frontier. Our findings suggest that the East-to-West German TFP ratio would have been 13.3 percent lower at the end of the Cold War had East Germany not engaged in industrial espionage in the West. (JEL L16, N44, O33, O38, O47, P24)

show abstract

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 70%

Industrial Espionage and Productivity

Glitz

Meyersson²

2020

American Economic Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…An alternative set of political institutions were provided by communism in some countries. It is well-established that communism influenced preferences (Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln, 2007) and that it destroyed social capital, most notably social trust and cooperation (Rainer and Siedler, 2009;Heineck and Süssmuth, 2013;Lichter et al, 2015). People became suspicious of each other in a dictatorial system, built on official and everyday spies and surveillance, increasing the risk for intolerance towards those who differ from the mainstream way of life.…”

Section: Political Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Roots of tolerance among second-generation immigrants

Berggren

Ljunge

Nilsson

2019

Journal of Institutional Economics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Tolerance – respecting individual choice and differences among people – is a prominent feature of modern European culture. That immigrants embrace this kind of liberal value is arguably important for integration, a central policy goal. We provide a rigorous study of what factors in the ancestral countries of second-generation immigrants – including formal and informal institutions – predict their level of tolerance towards gay people. Using the epidemiological method allows us to rule out reverse causality. Out of the 46 factors examined, one emerges as very robust: a Muslim ancestral background. Tolerance towards gay people is lower the larger the share of Muslims in the country from which the parents emigrated. An instrumental-variable analysis shows that the main mechanism is not through the individual being a Muslim, but through the individual being highly religious. Two additional attitudes among people in the ancestral country (valuing children being tolerant and respectful, and valuing children taking responsibility), as well as impartial institutions in the ancestral country, predict higher individual tolerance. Our findings thus point to an important role for both formal- and informal-institutional background factors in shaping tolerance.

show abstract

“…Evidence in line with experience e↵ects is also found in college students who graduate into recessions (Kahn 2010, Oreopoulos, von Wachter, andHeisz 2012), retail investors and mutual fund managers who experienced the stock-market boom of the 1990s (Vissing-Jorgensen 2003, Greenwood andNagel 2009), and CEOs who grew up in the Great Depression Tate 2005, Malmendier, Tate, andYan 2011). In the political realm, Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln (2007), Lichter, Lö✏er, and Siegloch (2016), Fuchs-Schündeln and Schündeln (2015), and Laudenbach et al (2018) reveal the long-term consequences of living under communism, its surveillance system, and propaganda on preferences, norms, and financial risk-taking.…”

mentioning

confidence: 82%

Scarred Consumption

Malmendier¹,

Shen²

2019

internationalfinance

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We show that prior lifetime experiences can "scar" consumers. Consumers who have lived through times of high unemployment exhibit persistent pessimism about their future financial situation and spend significantly less, controlling for the standard life-cycle consumption factors, even though their actual future income is uncorrelated with past experiences. Due to their experience-induced frugality, scarred consumers build up more wealth. We use a stochastic lifecycle model to show that the negative relationship between past experiences and consumption cannot be generated by financial constraints, income scarring, and unemployment scarring, but is consistent with experience-based learning.

show abstract

The Long-Term Costs of Government Surveillance: Insights from Stasi Spying in East Germany

Cited by 76 publications

References 60 publications

Industrial Espionage and Productivity

Industrial Espionage and Productivity

Roots of tolerance among second-generation immigrants

Scarred Consumption

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About