Private Sector Perceptions of Public Sector Performance in Cross-national Perspective: Methdological and Substantive Considerations

• In Event: 139 - Regular Session. Cross-National Sociology

Abstract

What drives the private sector’s attitude toward the public sector? We address the question by probing the relationship between the perceived burden of government regulation, on the one hand, and objective data on the nature, cost, and administration of government regulation in different political and economic contexts, on the other, and conclude that the former is a joint product of the latter—that is, that private sector perceptions of the public sector are colored by the policies the government adopts, the nature of their administration, and the broader political and economic climate. The results are doubly important, for they not only call the validity of widely used indicators of government performance into question but underscore the limits to policies designed to empower entrepreneurs in the developing world.

Authors

• Andrew Schrank, Brown University

• Marcus Kurtz