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Social norms and trust among strangers

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  • Xie, Huan
  • Lee, Yong-Ju

Abstract

We study the development of a social norm of trust and reciprocity among a group of strangers via the “contagious strategy” as defined in Kandori (1992). Over an infinite horizon, the players anonymously and randomly meet each other and play a binary trust game. In order to provide the investors with proper incentives to follow the contagious strategy, there is a sufficient condition that requires that there exists an outside option for the investors. Moreover, the investorsʼ payoff from the outside option must converge to the payoff from trust and reciprocity as the group size goes to infinity. We show that this sufficient condition is also a necessary condition to sustain any sequential equilibrium in which the trustees adopt the contagious strategy. Our results imply that a contagious equilibrium only supports trust if trust contributes almost nothing to the investorsʼ payoffs.

Suggested Citation

  • Xie, Huan & Lee, Yong-Ju, 2012. "Social norms and trust among strangers," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 548-555.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:76:y:2012:i:2:p:548-555
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2012.07.010
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    Cited by:

    1. John Duffy & Huan Xie, 2012. "Group Size and Cooperation Among Strangers," Working Paper 495, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jan 2012.
    2. John Duffy & Huan Xie & Yong-Ju Lee, 2013. "Social norms, information, and trust among strangers: theory and evidence," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(2), pages 669-708, March.
    3. Duffy, John & Xie, Huan, 2016. "Group size and cooperation among strangers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 126(PA), pages 55-74.
    4. Timothy Cason & Sau-Him Lau & Vai-Lam Mui, 2013. "Learning, teaching, and turn taking in the repeated assignment game," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 54(2), pages 335-357, October.
    5. Berger, Ulrich, 2016. "Learning to trust, learning to be trustworthy," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 212, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    6. Chen, Jidong & Liu, Shenglong & Zhang, Xiaoming & Zhou, Xingyu, 2023. "Building social trust through education," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Trust and reciprocity; Infinitely repeated game; Random matching; Contagious strategy; Sequential equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

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