EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Impersonal trust in a Just and Unjust world: Evidence from an educational intervention

Sule Alan and Elif Kubilay

Journal of Development Economics, 2023, vol. 162, issue C

Abstract: We provide causal evidence on how impersonal trust and reciprocity create prosperity and shape its distribution. For this, we leverage a large-scale randomized educational intervention that boosts trust and reciprocity in children. We show that in a world where individuals trust anonymous others, prosperity grows but so does inequality. While impersonal trust unambiguously creates wealth, redistribution is needed to tame the inequality it brings. Our results suggest that harnessing prosocial psychology through educational actions may pave the way for a prosperous and just society. However, for these actions to ultimately achieve this end, they should be pervasive and universally accessible.

Keywords: Impersonal trust; Prosperity; Inequality; Education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D63 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387822001869
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Impersonal Trust in a Just and Unjust World: Evidence from an Educational Intervention (2022) Downloads
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:eee:deveco:v:162:y:2023:i:c:s0304387822001869

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.103044

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:162:y:2023:i:c:s0304387822001869