IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/col/000089/005345.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trust and Trade

Author

Listed:
  • Oskar Nupia

Abstract

This paper presents a model demonstrating how trust affects the volume of trade in a society. There are two ways in which this happens. First, at minimum, societies need a certain level of trust in order to observe trading activity. Second, once this minimum condition is satisfied, the probability of observing a larger volume of trade is high only if the level of trust is sufficiently high. Our results help explain empirical findings that demonstrate a positive relationship between trust and the volume of sales, or the value added of trade. The model also shows that institutions can compensate for low levels of trust-that is, societies with low levels of trust can achieve volumes of trade comparable to those of societies with high levels of trust by spending more resources on increasing the quality of the relevant institutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Oskar Nupia, 2009. "Trust and Trade," Documentos CEDE 5345, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    • Handle: RePEc:col:000089:005345
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repositorio.uniandes.edu.co/bitstream/handle/1992/8090/dcede2009-03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2004. "The Role of Social Capital in Financial Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 526-556, June.
    2. Marcel Fafchamps & Bart Minten, 2001. "Social Capital and Agricultural Trade," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 83(3), pages 680-685.
    3. La Porta, Rafael, et al, 1997. "Trust in Large Organizations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 333-338, May.
    4. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1997. "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1251-1288.
    5. Joel Sobel, 2002. "Can We Trust Social Capital?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(1), pages 139-154, March.
    6. Mark Granovetter, 2005. "The Impact of Social Structure on Economic Outcomes," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(1), pages 33-50, Winter.
    7. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    8. Somanathan, E. & Rubin, Paul H., 2004. "The evolution of honesty," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 1-17, May.
    9. Calderon, Cesar & Chong, Alberto & Galindo, Arturo, 2002. "Development and Efficiency of the Financial Sector and Links with Trust: Cross-Country Evidence," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(1), pages 189-204, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yamamura, Eiji, 2008. "The role of social capital in homogeneous society: Review of recent researches in Japan," MPRA Paper 11385, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Baliamoune-Lutz, Mina, 2011. "Trust-based social capital, institutions, and development," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 335-346, August.
    3. Roberta Dessì & Salvatore Piccolo, 2008. "Two is Company, N is a Crowd? Merchant Guilds and Social Capital," CSEF Working Papers 202, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy, revised 12 Jul 2009.
    4. Fernando Ubeda & Alvaro Mendez & Francisco Javier Forcadell, 2024. "Sustainable banking and trust in the global South," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 15(S1), pages 34-44, March.
    5. Isaac Addai & Jelena Pokimica, 2012. "An Exploratory Study of Trust and Material Hardship in Ghana," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 413-438, December.
    6. Yamamura, Eiji, 2011. "The role of social trust in reducing long-term truancy and forming human capital in Japan," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 380-389, April.
    7. Lu, Haitian & Wang, Bo & Wang, Haizhi & Zhao, Tianyu, 2020. "Does social capital matter for peer-to-peer-lending? Empirical evidence," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    8. Javakhadze, David & Ferris, Stephen P. & French, Dan W., 2016. "Social capital, investments, and external financing," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 38-55.
    9. Enzo Dia, 2011. "Uncertainty, trust, and the regulation of the banking industry," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 58(2), pages 213-228, June.
    10. Moretti, Luigi, 2014. "Local financial development, socio-institutional environment, and firm productivity: Evidence from Italy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 38-51.
    11. Argentiero, Amedeo & Cerqueti, Roy & Sabatini, Fabio, 2021. "Does social capital explain the Solow residual? A DSGE approach," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 35-53.
    12. Thöni, Christian & Tyran, Jean-Robert & Wengström, Erik, 2012. "Microfoundations of social capital," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(7-8), pages 635-643.
    13. Éloi Laurent, 2009. "Peut-on se fier à la confiance ?," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(1), pages 5-30.
    14. Anchorena, José & Anjos, Fernando, 2015. "Social ties and economic development," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 63-84.
    15. Anderlini, Luca & Terlizzese, Daniele, 2017. "Equilibrium trust," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 624-644.
    16. Banerjee, Ritwik, 2016. "Corruption, norm violation and decay in social capital," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 14-27.
    17. Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Tarun Khanna, 2003. "Globalization and Trust: Theory and Evidence from Cooperatives," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series wp592, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    18. Ali Recayi Ogcem & Ruth Tacneng & Amine Tarazi, 2021. "Trust and Financial Development: Forms of Trust and Ethnic Fractionalization Matter," Working Papers hal-03322592, HAL.
    19. Dearmon, Jacob & Grier, Kevin, 2009. "Trust and development," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 210-220, August.
    20. Ho, Kung-Cheng & Yen, Huang-Ping & Gu, Yan & Shi, Lisi, 2020. "Does societal trust make firms more trustworthy?," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    trust; volume of trade; social capital; contract enforcement;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • D00 - Microeconomics - - General - - - General
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:col:000089:005345. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Universidad De Los Andes-Cede (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceandco.html .

    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.