Building Social Trust: A Human Capital Approach

Fali Huang ()

No 08-2007, Working Papers from Singapore Management University, School of Economics

Abstract: Much evidence suggests individuals differ in their predisposition to cooperate, which is essentially a component of human capital. This paper examines the role of individual cooperative tendencies and their interactions with institutions in generating social trust; it also endogenizes cooperative tendencies using a human capital investment model. Multiple equilibria and ineffciencies exist due to positive externalities. An innovative fi?nding is that, when institutions are more e¤ective in punishing defecting behaviors, more people invest in cooperative tendencies and hence the endogenous social trust is higher, though the equilibrium cooperative tendencies are lower. This paper provides a plausible explanation for many empirical and experimental results

JEL-codes: Z13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-ltv, nep-sea and nep-soc
Date: 2007-09
View list of references

Published in SMU Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series

Downloads: (external link)
https://mercury.smu.edu.sg/rsrchpubupload/12518/trust2007-9-15.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Building Social Trust: A Human-Capital Approach (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:siu:wpaper:08-2007

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Singapore Management University, School of Economics
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by QL THor ().