The story in the feature above is about recent research that suggests that U. S. companies with owners who are from countries in which cheating on your taxes is commonplace are more likely to cheat on their taxes than U. S. companies with owners who are from countries in which cheating is less common. I honestly don’t know how anyone can be surprised or distressed by that. As I’ve said any number of times before people bring their cultural and political assumptions with them when they come here. It’s true for investment as well as for corporate corruption.
The next time you hear someone touting immigration of people likely to start businesses as a strategy for boosting our economy keep in mind that the immigrants we get are more likely to come from Haiti or Venezuela (among the most corrupt countries in the world) than they are from Sweden or Denmark (among the least corrupt).
Participated in a recent discussion where it was suggested that the same holds true for student cheating. If it was ok to cheat where they came from, they will do it here in the US. There was some suggestion that this pervades into the second generation. Evidence for said claims was a bit spotty, but it does seem that when I hire from those groups their work performance doesn’t seem to quite match up to what I would expect based upon scores and where they trained. In discussions with chairs at other departments I have learned that this is not an uncommon problem. However, my N is still not big enough to reach any conclusions.
Steve
My point is not to take a position for or against merely to note that we should take this into account in our expectations.