 Distinguishing trust from risk: An anatomy of the investment gameDaniel Houser, Daniel Schunk and Joachim Winter () Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics Abstract: The role of trust in promoting economic activity and societal development has received considerable academic attention by social scientists. A popular way to measure trust at the individual level is the so-called \"investment game\" (Berg et al., 1995). It has been widely noted, however, that risk attitudes can also affect decisions in this game, and thus in principle confound inferences about trust. We provide novel evidence shedding light on the role of risk attitudes for trusting decisions. To the best of our knowledge our data are the first rigorous evidence that (i) aggregate investment distributions differ significantly between trust and risk environments, and (ii) risk attitudes predict individual investment decisions in risk games but not in the corresponding trust games. Our results are convergent evidence that trust decisions are not tightly connected to a person’s risk attitudes, and they lend support to the \"trust\" interpretation of decisions in investment games. Date: 2010 Published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 1-2 74(2010): pp. 72-81 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lmu:muenar:19378 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics Ludwigstr. 28, 80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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