Letter Grading Government Efficiency

摘要

Alberto Chong, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, and Andrei Shleifer examine the operations of the postal services in 159 countries as a lens for measuring the quality of government in those nations. In an experiment, they mailed ten letters to non-existent business addresses in each of the countries and then recorded whether they came back to the return address in the United States, and how long that took. Each envelope included a return address and a request to "please return to sender." About 60 percent of the letters were returned, but on average it took over six months for that to happen.