IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-12-00319.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Comment on “Inherited Trust and Growth”

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Müller

    (School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology)

  • Benno Torgler

    (School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology)

  • Eric M. Uslaner

    (Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland)

Abstract

Algan and Cahuc (2010) argue that “inherited trust” is a key factor in explaining growth rates across countries. They derive a measure of inherited trust by linking respondents' “home countries” in the United States General Social Survey (1972-2004) and the 2000 wave of the World Values Survey. Algan and Cahuc then estimate trust levels for people born before 1910 (inherited trust in 1935) and afterwards (inherited trust in 2000). They show a strong link between economic growth rates and inherited trust. We do not challenge this result, but we do argue that: (1) the 2000 World Values Survey has many anomalous results; (2) the estimates for inherited trust in 1935 are mostly based upon tiny samples for most ethnic heritage groups in the General Social Survey; and (3) Algan and Cahuc's findings are based upon two-tailed rather than one-tailed tests. We reestimate their model using the more reliable waves of the World Values Survey and find much weaker relationships between inherited trust in 1935 and trust in the home country. We also suggest caution in the overall measure of inherited trust in 1935.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Müller & Benno Torgler & Eric M. Uslaner, 2012. "A Comment on “Inherited Trust and Growth”," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(2), pages 1481-1488.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-12-00319
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2012/Volume32/EB-12-V32-I2-P142.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Clemens, Michael A. & Pritchett, Lant, 2019. "The new economic case for migration restrictions: An assessment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 153-164.
    2. Alexandre Padilla & Nicolás Cachanosky, 2018. "The Grecian horse: does immigration lead to the deterioration of American institutions?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 174(3), pages 351-405, March.
    3. Eric M. Uslaner, 2016. "A Reconsideration of Olivera’s “Changes in Inequality and Generalized Trust in Europe”," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 128(2), pages 723-729, September.
    4. Verena Jung & Sascha L. Schmidt & Benno Torgler, "undated". "Antecedents of Attitudes Towards Risky Career Choices," School of Economics and Finance Discussion Papers and Working Papers Series 297, School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology.
    5. Clemens, Michael & Pritchett, Lant, 2016. "The New Case for Migration Restrictions: An Assessment," Working Paper Series rwp16-054, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    6. Sascha L. Schmidt & Benno Torgler & Verena Jung, 2017. "Perceived trade-off between education and sports career: evidence from professional football," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(29), pages 2829-2850, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    inherited trust; generalized trust; US immigrants;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics
    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. A Comment on "Inherited Trust and Growth" (EB 2012) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-12-00319. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.