[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Late June saw the leading scientific journal, Science, publish an article ranking a sample of 40 countries in civic honesty, where people voluntarily refrain from opportunistic behavior. Worryingly for Arab and Islamic countries, they dominated the lowest positions in the rankings, while the highest positions were reserved for the countries with the highest living standards. While it is difficult to demonstrate a definitive causal relationship between civic honesty and economic success, the data should make policymakers think hard about the need to make people trust each other more as part of their economic strategies.The authors of the paper, titled "Civil honesty across the globe," conducted an experiment whereby a covert associate would return a "lost" wallet to one of five societal institutions (a bank, theater/museum, post office, hotel, or cop shoppe). The wallet would contain the contact details of the fictitious owner- an email address was created by the researchers- as well as some money and some personal possessions. The associate would say that they were in a hurry, and ask the receiving staff to assist in returning the wallet to its rightful owner. They did this with 17,000 wallets across 40 countries, allowing them to create a ranking of the 40 countries in terms of the likelihood that the lost wallet be returned.
Students of economics should be unsurprised by the top five countries: Switzerland