IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9200.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Trust and Trustworthiness Pay Off?

Author

Listed:
  • Joel Slemrod
  • Peter Katuscak

Abstract

Are individuals who trust others better off than those who do not? Do trustworthy people prosper more than untrustworthy ones? We first pose these questions in a search model where individuals face repeated choices between trusting (initiating an investment transaction) and not trusting, and between being trustworthy (not stealing the investment) and cheating. We then derive predictions for the relationship between observed individual behavior, aggregate attitudes, and individual prosperity. Finally, we evaluate these predictions empirically using household-level data for eighteen (mostly developed) countries from the World Values Survey. We find that, on average, a trusting attitude has a positive impact on income, while trustworthiness has a negative impact on income. In addition, we find evidence of complementarity between these two attitudes and the aggregate levels of the complementary attitudes. Most strikingly, the payoff to being trustworthy depends positively on the aggregate amount of trust in a given country.

Suggested Citation

  • Joel Slemrod & Peter Katuscak, 2002. "Do Trust and Trustworthiness Pay Off?," NBER Working Papers 9200, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9200
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9200.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zak, Paul J & Knack, Stephen, 2001. "Trust and Growth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(470), pages 295-321, April.
    2. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1997. "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1251-1288.
    3. La Porta, Rafael & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert, 1999. "The Quality of Government," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(1), pages 222-279, April.
    4. Isacsson, Gunnar, 1999. "Estimates of the return to schooling in Sweden from a large sample of twins," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 471-489, November.
    5. Card, David, 1999. "The causal effect of education on earnings," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 30, pages 1801-1863, Elsevier.
    6. Edward L. Glaeser & David I. Laibson & José A. Scheinkman & Christine L. Soutter, 2000. "Measuring Trust," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 811-846.
      • Glaeser, Edward Ludwig & Laibson, David I. & Scheinkman, Jose A. & Soutter, Christine L., 2000. "Measuring Trust," Scholarly Articles 4481497, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    7. Alberto Alesina & Eliana La Ferrara, 2000. "The Determinants of Trust," NBER Working Papers 7621, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Avinash Dixit, 2003. "On Modes of Economic Governance," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(2), pages 449-481, March.
    9. Altonji, Joseph G. & Blank, Rebecca M., 1999. "Race and gender in the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 48, pages 3143-3259, Elsevier.
    10. Harmon, Colm & Walker, Ian, 1995. "Estimates of the Economic Return to Schooling for the United Kingdom," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1278-1286, December.
    11. Danielson, Anders & Holm, Hakan J, 2002. "Trust in the Tropics? Experimental Evidence from Tanzania," Working Papers 2002:12, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    12. Parikshit Ghosh & Debraj Ray, 1996. "Cooperation in Community Interaction Without Information Flows," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(3), pages 491-519.
    13. Angrist, Joshua D. & Krueger, Alan B., 1999. "Empirical strategies in labor economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 23, pages 1277-1366, Elsevier.
    14. Jean Tirole, 1996. "A Theory of Collective Reputations (with applications to the persistence of corruption and to firm quality)," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(1), pages 1-22.
    15. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Angel de la Fuente & Antonio Ciccone, 2003. "Human capital in a global and knowledge-based economy," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 562.03, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    2. Peter Katuscak & Joel Slemrod, 2006. "Trust and Trustworthiness in an Economy with Heterogeneous Individuals," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp305, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    3. Tito Boeri & Jan van Ours, 2013. "The Economics of Imperfect Labor Markets: Second Edition," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10142.
    4. Martin Schlotter & Guido Schwerdt & Ludger Woessmann, 2011. "Econometric methods for causal evaluation of education policies and practices: a non-technical guide," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 109-137.
    5. Costas Meghir & Mårten Palme, 2003. "Ability, parental background and educational policy: empirical evidence from a social experiment," IFS Working Papers W03/05, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    6. Thomas Farole & Andres Rodriguez-Pose & Michael Storper, 2007. "Social capital, rules, and institutions: A cross-country investigation," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03461998, HAL.
    7. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2010. "Civic Capital as the Missing Link," NBER Working Papers 15845, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Lorenzo Rocco & Elena Fumagalli & Marc Suhrcke, 2014. "From Social Capital To Health – And Back," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(5), pages 586-605, May.
    9. Burns, Justine, 2006. "Racial stereotypes, stigma and trust in post-apartheid South Africa," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 805-821, September.
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/f0uohitsgqh8dhk980eal4i12 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Dayton-Johnson, Jeff, 2003. "Knitted warmth: the simple analytics of social cohesion," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 623-645, December.
    12. Akçomak, I. Semih & ter Weel, Bas, 2009. "Social capital, innovation and growth: Evidence from Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(5), pages 544-567, July.
    13. Sangnier, Marc, 2013. "Does trust favor macroeconomic stability?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 653-668.
    14. Andreas Lichter & Max Löffler & Sebastian Siegloch, 2021. "The Long-Term Costs of Government Surveillance: Insights from Stasi Spying in East Germany," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 741-789.
    15. Marco Ferroni & Mercedes Mateo Díaz & J. Mark Payne, 2007. "Development under Conditions of Inequality and Distrust: An Exploration of the Role of Social Capital and Social Cohesion in Latin America," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 53818, Inter-American Development Bank.
    16. Rainer, Helmut & Siedler, Thomas, 2009. "Does democracy foster trust?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 251-269, June.
    17. Card, David, 2001. "Estimating the Return to Schooling: Progress on Some Persistent Econometric Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(5), pages 1127-1160, September.
    18. Sheremeta, Roman & Smith, Vernon, 2017. "The Impact of the Reformation on the Economic Development of Western Europe," MPRA Paper 87220, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Beugelsdijk, Sjoerd & Klasing, Mariko J., 2016. "Diversity and trust: The role of shared values," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 522-540.
    20. Benno Torgler, 2008. "Trust in international organizations: An empirical investigation focusing on the United Nations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 65-93, March.
    21. Jian Huang & Henriëtte Maassen van den Brink & Wim Groot, 2012. "Does education promote social capital? Evidence from IV analysis and nonparametric-bound analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 1011-1034, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9200. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.