This Is How EU People Look At Others
People are in love with this fact that Greece, and only Greece, is the country that doesn't see Germany as the most hardworking, and that in face they see themselves as the most hardworking.
And while everyone is mocking it, people are mounting a spirited defense of the Greeks.
Brad Plumer at WaPo's wonkblog notes that OECD stats say Greeks do put in the most hours of work of any country.
In his latest note, SocGen's Albert Edwards defends the Greeks too for their hardwork, and says that the Greeks are more realistic about their problems than any other European country.
Hedge funder (and new blogger) Mark Dow also got a fascinating piece from the survey, in which he reveals some big insights about how to understand a country's economy.
There’s also an important side
point here for sovereign analysis. There is a tendency to
listen more to the people in the country being analyzed. It
is presumed they have ‘better information’ and understand
better how things work. But what I have learned in my
experience with sovereign crises over the years is that
whatever informational advantage they have is usually more
than offset by (1) their difficulty in distinguishing
between things that matter and things that don’t; (2) the
psychological baggage with respect to their own past, and
(3) the often emotionally-charged nature of their
perspective. Shorter: never ask a Brazilian about Brazilian
inflation risk.
The third column tells us
something else about human nature. Five out of eight
countries chose their own country as the most corrupt in the
survey. Why? I, for one, still haven’t been to a country
where people complain they are being taxed too little.
Similarly, I hear in virtually all countries going through
rough times that they could solve their problems if they
could only end corruption in government. This is the height
of wishful exculpation. It also ignores the fact that China
has grown spectacularly over the past decade, despite what many believe to be a highly corrupt
system. And, even if it were true that corruption were the
primary cause of a country’s ills, it also ignores the
reality that government is usually a reflection of a
country’s culture, and changing the politicians doesn’t
change the incentive structure that gives rise to corrupt
behavior.
Bottom line: Everybody loves this chart because there seems to be so much meat in it.
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