Capitalism, Russian-style

Sometimes one wonders if the public reputation in Russia of capitalism and the market economy can ever recover from the damage done to it by the appalling way that state enterprises were packaged up and sold off to the politically connected at a knock down price in the 1990s. Greg Mankiw highlights a new survey that shows that a majority of Russians believe that criminal activity and political connections are necessary to make your fortune; a mere one in five think that talent matters. As Aleh Tsyvinski and Sergei Guriev argue, these views are self-fulfilling