The glue of the economic system: the effect of relational goods on trust and trustworthiness

Leonardo Becchetti, Giacomo Degli Antoni (), Marco Faillo () and Luigi Mittone

No 705, CEEL Working Papers from Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia

Abstract: The role of �relational goods� is almost unexplored in the literature, yet our experimental results document that, even in their weakest form (opportunity of meeting an unknown player at the end of an experimental game), they significantly affect important �lubricants� of economic activity such as trust and trustworthiness and generate significant departures from the standard Nash equilibrium outcome in trust (investment) games. Our findings suggest that relational goods are an important �source of energy� in economic interactions and that the study of this �neglected particle� of socioeconomic life may produce significant advancements on both positive and normative economics.

Keywords: relational goods; trust; experimental games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C72 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hap and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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