Legacies of violence: trust and market development

Alessandra Cassar, Pauline Grosjean and Sam Whitt ()

Journal of Economic Growth, 2013, vol. 18, issue 3, 285-318

Abstract: We study the effect of individual exposure to civil conflict on trust and preferences for market participation. We conducted behavioral experiments and surveys among 426 randomly selected individuals more than a decade after the end of the Tajik civil war. We find that exposure to violence undermines trust within localities, decreases the willingness to engage in impersonal exchange, and reinforces kinship-based norms of morality. The effect is strongest where infighting was most severe and where political polarization is high. Robustness of the results to the use of pre-war controls, village fixed effects, and alternative samples suggest that selection into victimization is unlikely to explain the results. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Keywords: Civil war; Trust game; Market institutions; Tajikistan; C93; D03; O53; P30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (149)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10887-013-9091-3

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