IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

Introducing a Signaling Institution: An Experimental Investigation

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Friedel Bolle
  • Jessica Kaehler

Abstract

Trustworthiness can be conveyed by sending a costly signal in advance. In an experiment, we find that the smaller the percentage of trustworthy people in a group, the higher is their percentage of signaling. The introduction of signaling has strong distributional effects. It may be efficient because only under this institution can large-scale justified trust develop. In other circumstances, it may be (and in this investigation is only slightly) inefficient. The social product may be decreased, not only because of signaling costs but because of a lack of trust for people who, although trustworthy, are not ready to send the costly signal.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mohr/jite/2007/00000163/00000003/art00004
Download Restriction: Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Article provided by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen in its journal Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics.

Volume (Year): 163 (2007)
Issue (Month): 3 (September)
Pages: 428-447

as
in new window

Handle: RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(200709)163:3_428:iasiae_2.0.tx_2-m
Contact details of provider: Web page: https://www.mohr.de/jite

Order Information: Postal: Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG, P.O.Box 2040, 72010 Tübingen, Germany
Email:


Keywords:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

  • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
  • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior

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.:

as
in new window


  1. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Social Interactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1063-1093, Nov.-Dec..
  2. Bohnet, Iris & Zeckhauser, Richard, 2004. "Trust, risk and betrayal," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 467-484, December.
  3. Max Albert & Werner Güth & Erich Kirchler & Boris Maciejovsky, 2007. "Are we nice(r) to nice(r) people?—An experimental analysis," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(1), pages 53-69, March.
  4. Andreoni, James, 1990. "Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 464-477, June.
  5. Friedel Bolle & Jessica Kaehler, 2006. "Coleman's Hypothesis on trusting behaviour and a remark on meta-studies," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(4), pages 469-483.
  6. Friedel Bolle, 1998. "Rewarding Trust: An Experimental Study," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 83-98, August.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as
in new window


Cited by:

  1. Fehrler, Sebastian & Przepiorka, Wojtek, 2016. "Choosing a partner for social exchange: Charitable giving as a signal of trustworthiness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 157-171.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(200709)163:3_428:iasiae_2.0.tx_2-m. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Thomas Wolpert)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.