IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/gunwpe/0167.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trust and Religion: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh

Author

Listed:
  • Johansson-Stenman, Olof

    (Department of Economics, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University)

  • Mahmud, Minhaj

    (Department of Economics, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University)

  • Martinsson, Peter

    (Department of Economics, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University)

Abstract

Trust is measured using both survey questions and a standard trust experiment using a random sample of individuals in rural Bangladesh. We found no significant effect of the social distance between Hindus and Muslims in the trust experiment in terms of fractions sent or returned, but the responses to the survey questions indicate significant differences: Hindus, the minority, trust other people less in general, and Hindus trust Muslims more than the other way around.

Suggested Citation

  • Johansson-Stenman, Olof & Mahmud, Minhaj & Martinsson, Peter, 2005. "Trust and Religion: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh," Working Papers in Economics 167, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0167
    Note: Published in Economica, 2009, Vol. 76, pp. 462-485.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William Easterly & Ross Levine, 1997. "Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1203-1250.
    2. Bouckaert, Jan & Dhaene, Geert, 2004. "Inter-ethnic trust and reciprocity: results of an experiment with small businessmen," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 869-886, November.
    3. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher & Bernhard von Rosenbladt & J�rgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, "undated". "A Nation-Wide Laboratory: Examining trust and trustworthiness by integrating behavioral experiments into representative surveys," IEW - Working Papers 141, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    4. Buchan, Nancy & Croson, Rachel, 2004. "The boundaries of trust: own and others' actions in the US and China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 485-504, December.
    5. Sendhil Mullainathan & Marianne Bertrand, 2001. "Do People Mean What They Say? Implications for Subjective Survey Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 67-72, May.
    6. Chaim Fershtman & Uri Gneezy, 2001. "Discrimination in a Segmented Society: An Experimental Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 351-377.
    7. Bohnet, Iris & Croson, Rachel, 2004. "Trust and trustworthiness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 443-445, December.
    8. Sjoerd Beugelsdijk & Henri L.F. de Groot & Anton B.T.M. van Schaik, 2004. "Trust and economic growth: a robustness analysis," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 56(1), pages 118-134, January.
    9. Chaim Fershtman & Uri Gneezy & Frank Verboven, 2005. "Discrimination and Nepotism: The Efficiency of the Anonymity Rule," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(2), pages 371-396, June.
    10. Alesina, Alberto & La Ferrara, Eliana, 2002. "Who trusts others?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 207-234, August.
    11. Iris Bohnet & Heike Harmgart & Steffen Huck & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2005. "Learning Trust," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(2-3), pages 322-329, 04/05.
    12. Eckel, Catherine C. & Wilson, Rick K., 2004. "Is trust a risky decision?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 447-465, December.
    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. Lisa Anderson & Jennifer Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2010. "Did the Devil Make Them Do It? The Effects of Religion in Public Goods and Trust Games," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(2), pages 163-175, May.
    2. Sonia Di Giannatale & Alexander Elbittar & Patricia López-Rodríguez & María-José Roa-García, 2013. "Trust, Information Acquisition and Financial Decisions: A Field Experiment," Economía Mexicana NUEVA ÉPOCA, CIDE, División de Economía, vol. 0(2), pages 375-401, July-Dece.
    3. Ruffle Bradley J. & Sosis Richard, 2007. "Does It Pay To Pray? Costly Ritual and Cooperation," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-37, March.
    4. Anderson, Lisa R. & Mellor, Jennifer M., 2009. "Religion and cooperation in a public goods experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 58-60, October.
    5. Calabuig, Vicente & Fatas, Enrique & Olcina, Gonzalo & Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael, 2016. "Carry a big stick, or no stick at all," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 153-171.
    6. Maryam Dilmaghani, 2012. "Global financial crisis: dharmic transgressions and solutions," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 39(1), pages 55-80, January.
    7. M. Niaz Asadullah, 2017. "Who Trusts Others? Community and Individual Determinants of Social Capital in a Low-Income Country," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 41(2), pages 515-544.
    8. Chuah, Swee-Hoon & Hoffmann, Robert & Jones, Martin & Williams, Geoffrey, 2009. "An economic anatomy of culture: Attitudes and behaviour in inter- and intra-national ultimatum game experiments," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 732-744, October.
    9. Johnson, Noel D. & Mislin, Alexandra A., 2011. "Trust games: A meta-analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 865-889.
    10. Sajad Ebrahimi Meimand & Zainab Khalifah & Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas & Abbas Mardani & Amir Abbas Najafipour & Ungku Norulkamar Ungku Ahmad, 2017. "Residents’ Attitude toward Tourism Development: A Sociocultural Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(7), pages 1-29, July.
    11. Jeffrey Milyo & Jennifer M. Mellor & Lisa Anderson, 2005. "Did the Devil Make Them Do It? The Effects of Religion and Religiosity in Public Goods and Trust Games," Working Papers 0512, Department of Economics, University of Missouri.
    12. Barrios Juan José & Gandelman Nestor, 2015. "Religious Participation, Trust and Reciprocity: Evidence from Six Latin American Cities," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 353-376, January.
    13. Rodriguez-lara, Ismael, 2015. "Equal distribution or equal payoffs? Reciprocity and inequality aversion in the investment game," MPRA Paper 63313, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Olof Johansson‐Stenman & Minhaj Mahmud & Peter Martinsson, 2009. "Trust and Religion: Experimental Evidence from Rural Bangladesh," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 76(303), pages 462-485, July.
    2. Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2008. "Who are the trustworthy, we think?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(3-4), pages 456-465, December.
    3. Lisa R. Anderson & Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2005. "An Experimental Study of the Effects of Inequality and Relative Deprivation on Trusting Behavior," Working Papers 14, Department of Economics, College of William and Mary.
    4. Burns, Justine, 2012. "Race, diversity and pro-social behavior in a segmented society," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 366-378.
    5. 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.
    6. Johansson-Stenman, Olof & Mahmud, Minhaj & Martinsson, Peter, 2013. "Trust, trust games and stated trust: Evidence from rural Bangladesh," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 286-298.
    7. Abigail Barr, 2004. "Rational and Biased Trust," Development and Comp Systems 0409068, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Lisa Anderson & Jennifer Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2006. "Induced heterogeneity in trust experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(3), pages 223-235, September.
    9. Fijnanda van Klingeren, 2020. "Playing nice in the sandbox: On the role of heterogeneity, trust and cooperation in common-pool resources," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(8), pages 1-36, August.
    10. Mahajna, Ahmad & Benzion, Uri & Bogaire, Ravid & Shavit, Tal, 2008. "Subjective discount rates among Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2513-2522, December.
    11. Ciriolo, Emanuele, 2007. "Inequity aversion and trustees' reciprocity in the trust game," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 1007-1024, December.
    12. Alberto Alesina & Paola Giuliano, 2015. "Culture and Institutions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 53(4), pages 898-944, December.
    13. Alvin Etang & David Fielding & Stephen Knowles, 2011. "Does trust extend beyond the village? Experimental trust and social distance in Cameroon," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(1), pages 15-35, March.
    14. Daniel Ji & Pablo Guillen, 2010. "Trust, discrimination and acculturation Experimental evidence on Asian international and Australian domestic university students," ThE Papers 09/12, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    15. Justine Burns, 2004. "Race and trust in post-apartheid South Africa," SALDRU/CSSR Working Papers 078, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    16. Giuseppe Albanese & Guido de Blasio & Paolo Sestito, 2017. "Trust, risk and time preferences: evidence from survey data," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 64(4), pages 367-388, December.
    17. Lukas, Daniel, 2009. "Efficiency effects of cross-border medical demand," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 15/09, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.
    18. Dickinson, David L. & Masclet, David & Peterle, Emmanuel, 2018. "Discrimination as favoritism: The private benefits and social costs of in-group favoritism in an experimental labor market," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 220-236.
    19. Dhami, Sanjit & Wei, Mengxing & Mamidi, Pavan, 2024. "Religious identity, trust, reciprocity, and prosociality: Theory and evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    20. Zhang, Zhe & Zhang, Xu & Putterman, Louis, 2019. "Trust and cooperation at a confluence of worlds: An experiment in Xinjiang, China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 128-144.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social capital; trust; social distance; religion; trust game; field experiment; Bangladesh;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    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:hhs:gunwpe:0167. 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: Jessica Oscarsson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/naiguse.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.