IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ese/iserwp/2011-08.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The long shadow of income on trustworthiness

Author

Listed:
  • Ermisch, John
  • Gambetta, Diego

Abstract

We employ a behavioural measure of trustworthiness obtained from an experiment carried out with a sample of the general British population whose individuals were extensively interviewed on earlier occasions. Our basic finding is that given past income, higher current income increases trustworthiness and, given current income, higher past income reduces trustworthiness. Past income determines the level of financial aspirations and whether or not these are fulfilled by the level of current income affects trustworthiness. We also suspect that past income may also capture heterogeneity in relevant subjects' dispositions, with more opportunistic subjects being less trustworthy and having higher average incomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Ermisch, John & Gambetta, Diego, 2011. "The long shadow of income on trustworthiness," ISER Working Paper Series 2011-08, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2011-08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/working-papers/iser/2011-08.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bellemare, Charles & Kroger, Sabine, 2007. "On representative social capital," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 183-202, January.
    2. John Ermisch & Diego Gambetta & Heather Laurie & Thomas Siedler & S. C. Noah Uhrig, 2009. "Measuring people's trust," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 172(4), pages 749-769, October.
    3. Andrew E. Clark & Paul Frijters & Michael A. Shields, 2008. "Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(1), pages 95-144, March.
    4. Lynn, Peter & Jäckle, Annette & Sala, Emanuela & P. Jenkins, Stephen, 2004. "Validation of survey data on income and employment: the ISMIE experience," ISER Working Paper Series 2004-14, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    5. repec:dgr:kubcen:200347 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Easterlin, Richard A., 1974. "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 111773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. McCabe, Kevin A. & Rigdon, Mary L. & Smith, Vernon L., 2003. "Positive reciprocity and intentions in trust games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 267-275, October.
    8. Bellemare, Charles & Kroger, Sabine, 2007. "On representative social capital," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 183-202, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anna Shaleva, 2015. "Uncovering the impact of intergenerational income mobility on interpersonal trust," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-17, December.

    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. John Ermisch & Diego Gambetta & Heather Laurie & Thomas Siedler & S. C. Noah Uhrig, 2009. "Measuring people's trust," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 172(4), pages 749-769, October.
    2. Ermisch, John & Gambetta, Diego, 2010. "Do strong family ties inhibit trust?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 365-376, September.
    3. Viitanen, Tarja K., 2014. "The divorce revolution and generalized trust: Evidence from the United States 1973–2010," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 25-32.
    4. Gereke, Johanna & Schaub, Max & Baldassarri, Delia, 2018. "Ethnic diversity, poverty and social trust in Germany: Evidence from a behavioral measure of trust," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 13(7), pages 1-15.
    5. Casari, Marco & Cason, Timothy N., 2009. "The strategy method lowers measured trustworthy behavior," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 103(3), pages 157-159, June.
    6. Naef, Michael & Schupp, Jürgen, 2009. "Measuring Trust: Experiments and Surveys in Contrast and Combination," IZA Discussion Papers 4087, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. S. Bortolotti & M. Casari & F. Pancotto, 2013. "Norms of Punishment in the General Population," Working Papers wp898, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    8. Matteo M. Galizzi & Daniel Navarro-Martinez, 2019. "On the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 976-1002, March.
    9. Becchetti, Leonardo & Conzo, Pierluigi, 2011. "Enhancing capabilities through credit access: Creditworthiness as a signal of trustworthiness under asymmetric information," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3-4), pages 265-278, April.
    10. Martin G. Kocher, 2015. "How Trust in Social Dilemmas Evolves with Age," CESifo Working Paper Series 5447, CESifo.
    11. Sofianos, Andis, 2022. "Self-reported & revealed trust: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    12. Ashraf, Nava & Bohnet, Iris & Piankov, Nikita, 2003. "Is Trust a Bad Investment?," Working Paper Series rwp03-047, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    13. Grund Christian & Harbring Christine, 2013. "Trust and Control at the Workplace: Evidence from Representative Samples of Employees in Europe," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 233(5-6), pages 619-637, October.
    14. Johanna Gereke & Max Schaub & Delia Baldassarri, 2018. "Ethnic diversity, poverty and social trust in Germany: Evidence from a behavioral measure of trust," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(7), pages 1-15, July.
    15. Tamás Kovács & Marc Willinger, 2010. "Is there a relation between trust and trustworthiness?," Working Papers 10-03, LAMETA, Universtiy of Montpellier, revised Mar 2010.
    16. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann & Christian Thoeni, 2010. "Culture and Cooperation," Discussion Papers 2010-09, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    17. Dohmen, Thomas, 2014. "Behavioral labor economics: Advances and future directions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    18. Ola Kvaløy & Miguel Luzuriaga, 2014. "Playing the trust game with other people’s money," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(4), pages 615-630, December.
    19. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann & Christian Thöni, 2010. "Culture and Cooperation," CESifo Working Paper Series 3070, CESifo.
      • Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann & Christian Thoeni, 2010. "Culture and Cooperation," Discussion Papers 2010-09, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
      • Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann & Christian Thoeni, 2010. "Culture and Cooperation," Discussion Papers 2010-09, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    20. Martijn J. van den Assem & Dennie van Dolder & Richard H. Thaler, 2012. "Split or Steal? Cooperative Behavior When the Stakes Are Large," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(1), pages 2-20, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - 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:ese:iserwp:2011-08. 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: Jonathan Nears (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rcessuk.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.