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Verified Trust: Reciprocity, Altruism, and Noise in Trust Games

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Author Info
Marius Brülhart
Jean-Claude Usunier

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Abstract

Behavioral economists have come to recognize that reciprocity, the interaction of trust and trustworthiness, is a distinct and economically relevant component of individual preferences alongside selfishness and altruism. This recognition is principally due to observed decisions in experimental "trust games". However, recent research has cast doubt on the explanatory power of trust as a determinant of those decisions, suggesting that altruism may explain much of what "looks like" trust. Moreover, empirical tests for alternative behavioral determinants can be sensitive to experimental bias due to differences in protocols and framing. Therefore, we propose discriminatory tests for altruism and trust that can be based on within-treatment and within-subject comparisons, and we control for group attributes of experimental subjects. Our results support trust (i.e. expected reciprocation) as the dominant motivation for "trust like" decisions.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, DEEP in its series Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'Econométrie et d'Economie politique (DEEP) with number 04.15.

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Length: 35 pages
Date of creation: Oct 2004
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Handle: RePEc:lau:crdeep:04.15

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Postal: Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, DEEP, Internef, CH-1015 Lausanne
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Web page: http://www.hec.unil.ch/deep/publications-english/e-cahiers.htm

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Related research
Keywords: reciprocity; altruism; trust game; experimental error;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Vyrastekova, Jana & Garikipati, Supriya, 2005. "Beliefs and trust : an experiment," Discussion Paper 88, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
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