TY  - JOUR
AU  - Slemrod,Joel
AU  - Katuscak,Peter
TI  - Do Trust and Trustworthiness Pay Off?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9200
PY  - 2002
Y2  - September 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9200
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9200.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Joel Slemrod
University of Michigan Business School
701 Tappan Street
Room R5396
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1234
Tel: 734/936-3914
Fax: 734-615-4323
E-Mail: jslemrod@umich.edu
AB  - 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.
ER  -