[[{“type”:“media”,“view_mode”:“media_large”,“fid”:null,“attributes”:{“class”:“media-image alignright size-full wp-image-1615”,“typeof”:“foaf:Image”,“style”:“”,“width”:“100”,“height”:“100”,“alt”:“Wall Street Journal”}}]]The Wall Street Journal reports that Dartmouth’s Rafael La Porta, the Nobel Foundation Professor of Finance at the Tuck School of Business, and three fellow economists took a novel approach to gauging the efficiency of the world’s governments: They mailed letters to nonexistent businesses in 159 countries, two letters to each country’s five biggest cities. Then they waited a full year to see whether the letters were sent back to the Hanover, N.H., return address.

In all, 59 percent of the letters were returned within the year. The most efficient countries, then, were held to be the ones with the best return record. Four countries had 100 percent return scores.

Read the full story, published 8/6/12 by The Wall Street Journal.