Culture, caution, and trust

Janice Boucher Breuer and John McDermott
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Janice Breuer Bass

Journal of Development Economics, 2012, vol. 97, issue 1, 15-23

Abstract: Trust is an important determinant of economic development. Understanding its origins is therefore critical. We develop a principal-agent model with heterogeneous players to determine the aggregate amount of trustworthiness and trust in a society. People are distributed according to their preference toward caution, which we model as loss aversion. The first two moments of the distribution across principals and agents—along with institutional quality—are critical to the process by which trustworthiness and trust are formed. A direct effect suggests that more caution leads to less societal trust. An indirect effect of greater caution, working through trustworthiness, leads to more trust. Paradoxically, the net effect is almost always positive. The results are similar when we use expected utility theory. Different distributional assumptions can influence the results.

Keywords: Trust; Risk; Caution; Culture; Trustworthiness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O1 Z1 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:97:y:2012:i:1:p:15-23

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2011.02.001

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