News of Norway, issue 6, 1996
These are conclusions drawn from a frankly unscientific experiment by Reader's Digest, which "accidentally" dropped some 200 wallets, each containing about $50 worth of cash, plus family snapshots and contact numbers of the putative owners. In a score of cities, small towns and suburbs across Europe, the wallets were left in such places as zoos, gas stations, supermarkets, telephone booths and cafes.
In all, 58 percent of the finders returned the wallets, either directly to their owners or through an official intermediary—a policeman, hotel receptionist or the like. In America, where the experiment was conducted in twelve large and small cities, 67 percent of the wallets came back.
Nordics appear to be more honest than Mediterraneans; few wallets dropped in Italy came back. No other geographical or demographic pattern emerged. The rate of return was middling in Britain, France and the Netherlands. Across Europe, men were as prone as women to return the wallets, the young as likely as the old, immigrants and the poor as likely as the rich.
Dens of thieves? Tidy Lausanne, Switzerland, and Weimar, home of Goethe and Schiller, turn out to be the places where you least want to lose your wallet. In Lausanne, one of only two wallets to be returned was handed in by an Albanian. In the Hague, one of five wallets that were never seen again had been dropped in front of the International Court of Justice.
—From The Economist