South By North Strategies, Ltd.

A nifty piece of research by the European economists Sascha Becker and Ludger Woessmann finds that “firms and people living in what used to be the [Austro-Hungarian] Empire have higher trust in courts and police” compared to those on opposite sides of the former Hapsburg border. From the article:

Our results show that past formal institutions can leave a long-lasting legacy through cultural norms – even after some are generations of being governed by other authorities. Nearly a century after its demise, the Habsburg Empire lives on in the people living within its former borders – in their attitudes towards and interactions with local state institutions. Comparing individuals living on either side of the long-gone Habsburg border within the same modern-day country, we find that respondents in a current household survey who live on former Habsburg territory have higher levels of trust in courts and police. They are also less likely to pay bribes for these local public services, demonstrating that the institutional heritage influences not only preferences and unilateral decisions but also bilateral bargaining situations in citizen-state interactions.

And because Policy Points likes maps, but rarely gets to use them, below is a map of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, circa 1900, placed over the modern map.