A Comment on “Inherited Trust and Growth”

Daniel Müller, Benno Torgler () and Eric Uslaner ()
Additional contact information
Benno Torgler: School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology

Economics Bulletin, 2012, vol. 32, issue 2, 1481-1488

Abstract: Algan and Cahuc (2010) argue that “inherited trust” is a key factor in explaining growth rates across countries. They derive a measure of inherited trust by linking respondents' “home countries” in the United States General Social Survey (1972-2004) and the 2000 wave of the World Values Survey. Algan and Cahuc then estimate trust levels for people born before 1910 (inherited trust in 1935) and afterwards (inherited trust in 2000). They show a strong link between economic growth rates and inherited trust. We do not challenge this result, but we do argue that: (1) the 2000 World Values Survey has many anomalous results; (2) the estimates for inherited trust in 1935 are mostly based upon tiny samples for most ethnic heritage groups in the General Social Survey; and (3) Algan and Cahuc's findings are based upon two-tailed rather than one-tailed tests. We reestimate their model using the more reliable waves of the World Values Survey and find much weaker relationships between inherited trust in 1935 and trust in the home country. We also suggest caution in the overall measure of inherited trust in 1935.

Keywords: inherited trust; generalized trust; US immigrants (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-05-17
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2012/Volume32/EB-12-V32-I2-P142.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-12-00319

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics Bulletin from AccessEcon
Bibliographic data for series maintained by John P. Conley ().