Microfoundations of Social Capital
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Microfoundations of Social Capital. / Thöni, Christian; Tyran, Jean-Robert; Wengström, Erik Roland.
Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen, 2009.Research output: Working paper › Research
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TY - UNPB
T1 - Microfoundations of Social Capital
AU - Thöni, Christian
AU - Tyran, Jean-Robert
AU - Wengström, Erik Roland
N1 - JEL classification: H41, C91, C72
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - We show that the standard trust question routinely used in social capital research is importantly related to cooperation behavior and we provide a microfoundation for this relation. We run a large-scale public goods experiment over the internet in Denmark and find that the trust question is a proxy for cooperation preferences rather than beliefs about others' cooperation. To disentangle the preference and belief channels, we run a (standard) public goods game in which beliefs matter for cooperation choices and one (using the strategy method) in which they do not matter. We show that the "fairness question", a recently proposed alternative to the "trust question", is also related to cooperation behavior but operates through beliefs rather than preferences.
AB - We show that the standard trust question routinely used in social capital research is importantly related to cooperation behavior and we provide a microfoundation for this relation. We run a large-scale public goods experiment over the internet in Denmark and find that the trust question is a proxy for cooperation preferences rather than beliefs about others' cooperation. To disentangle the preference and belief channels, we run a (standard) public goods game in which beliefs matter for cooperation choices and one (using the strategy method) in which they do not matter. We show that the "fairness question", a recently proposed alternative to the "trust question", is also related to cooperation behavior but operates through beliefs rather than preferences.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - trust
KW - fairness
KW - public goods
KW - cooperation
KW - experiment
M3 - Working paper
BT - Microfoundations of Social Capital
PB - Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen
ER -
ID: 15712370