Christian Thöni (University of St. Gallen) Jean-Robert Tyran (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen) Erik Wengström (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen)
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We show that the standard trust question routinely used in social capital research is importantly related to cooperation behavior and we provide a microfoundation for this relation. We run a large-scale public goods experiment over the internet in Denmark and find that the trust question is a proxy for cooperation preferences rather than beliefs about others’ cooperation. To disentangle the preference and belief channels, we run a (standard) public goods game in which beliefs matter for cooperation choices and one (using the strategy method) in which they do not matter. We show that the “fairness question”, a recently proposed alternative to the “trust question”, is also related to cooperation behavior but operates through beliefs rather than preferences.
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Paper provided by University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics in its series Discussion Papers with number
09-24.
Length: 21 pages Date of creation: Oct 2009 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0924
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
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