A note on the theory and measurement of trust in explaining differences in economic growth

Sjoerd Beugelsdijk ()

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2006, vol. 30, issue 3, 371-387

Abstract: This paper takes issue with the trend to attribute differences in economic growth rates to differences in interpersonal trust. I discuss the World Values Survey (WVS) measure that is used to operationalise trust at the macro level. I hypothesise that there is a mismatch between the theoretical argument and the empirical operationalisation of trust. Instead of measuring trust, the WVS measure may instead proxy the well-functioning of institutions. I provide circumstantial evidence for this thesis by a principal components analysis of trust and institutions and a robustness test of Zak and Knack's (2001. Trust and growth, Economic Journal, vol. 111, 295--321) seminal study on trust and economic growth. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (44)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/bei064 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:cambje:v:30:y:2006:i:3:p:371-387

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Cambridge Journal of Economics is currently edited by Jacqui Lagrue

More articles in Cambridge Journal of Economics from Cambridge Political Economy Society Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().