IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/harjfk/rwp10-031.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Elasticity of Trust: How to Promote Trust in the Arab Middle East and the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Bohnet, Iris

    (Harvard University)

  • Herrmann, Benedikt

    (European Commission)

  • Al-Ississ, Mohamad

    (Harvard University)

  • Robbett, Andrea

    (CA Institute of Technology)

  • Al-Yahia, Khalid

    (Dubai School of Government)

  • Zeckhauser, Richard

    (Harvard University)

Abstract

To trust is to risk. When we lend someone money, we make ourselves vulnerable, hoping or expecting that the borrower will reward our trust and return the money at a later stage, possibly with interest or a reciprocal favor added. This paper examines whether willingness to trust follows the same logic, that is, whether it responds to changes in the expected value of trusting, much like willingness to take risk responds to changes in the expected value of risk taking in various countries of the Arab Middle East, namely, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and in the United States.

Suggested Citation

  • Bohnet, Iris & Herrmann, Benedikt & Al-Ississ, Mohamad & Robbett, Andrea & Al-Yahia, Khalid & Zeckhauser, Richard, 2010. "The Elasticity of Trust: How to Promote Trust in the Arab Middle East and the United States," Working Paper Series rwp10-031, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp10-031
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=7355&type=WPN
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gneezy, Uri & Rustichini, Aldo, 2000. "A Fine is a Price," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    3. AfDB AfDB, . "African Development Report 2002," African Development Report, African Development Bank, number 19 edited by Adeleke Oluwole Salami, August.
    4. Bohnet, Iris & Zeckhauser, Richard, 2004. "Trust, risk and betrayal," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 467-484, December.
    5. Ernst Fehr & John A. List, 2004. "The Hidden Costs and Returns of Incentives-Trust and Trustworthiness Among CEOs," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(5), pages 743-771, September.
    6. Axel Ockenfels & Gary E. Bolton, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March.
    7. Blount, Sally, 1995. "When Social Outcomes Aren't Fair: The Effect of Causal Attributions on Preferences," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 131-144, August.
    8. Camerer, Colin & Weigelt, Keith, 1988. "Experimental Tests of a Sequential Equilibrium Reputation Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(1), pages 1-36, January.
    9. Greif, Avner, 1993. "Contract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade: the Maghribi Traders' Coalition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 525-548, June.
    10. Timur Kuran, 1995. "Islamic Economics and the Islamic Subeconomy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 155-173, Fall.
    11. Michael Kosfeld & Markus Heinrichs & Paul J. Zak & Urs Fischbacher & Ernst Fehr, 2005. "Oxytocin increases trust in humans," Nature, Nature, vol. 435(7042), pages 673-676, June.
    12. Pillutla, Madan M. & Murnighan, J. Keith, 1996. "Unfairness, Anger, and Spite: Emotional Rejections of Ultimatum Offers," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 208-224, December.
    13. Kuran, Timur, 2005. "The logic of financial westernization in the Middle East," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 593-615, April.
    14. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    15. Kuran, T., 1995. "Islamic Economics and the Islamic Subeconomy," Papers 9505, Southern California - Department of Economics.
    16. AfDB AfDB, . "African Development Report 2004," African Development Report, African Development Bank, number 21 edited by Adeleke Oluwole Salami, August.
    17. Rachel Croson & Uri Gneezy, 2009. "Gender Differences in Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 448-474, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Samuel Bowles & Sandra Polania-Reyes, 2011. "Economic incentives and social preferences: substitutes or complements?," Department of Economics University of Siena 617, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    2. Leiser, David & Benita, Rinat & Bourgeois-Gironde, Sacha, 2016. "Differing conceptions of the causes of the economic crisis: Effects of culture, economic training, and personal impact," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 154-163.
    3. Samuel Bowles & Sandra Polania-Reyes, 2012. "Economic Incentives and Social Preferences: Substitutes or Complements?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(2), pages 368-425, June.

    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. Bohnet, Iris & Herrmann, Benedikt & Zeckhauser, Richard, 2005. "The Elasticity of Trust: Evidence from Kuwait, Oman, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and the United States," Working Paper Series rwp05-046, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    2. Iris Bohnet & Benedikt Herrmann & Richard Zeckhauser, 2005. "The Elasticity Of Trust: Evidence From Kuwait, Oman, Switzerland, The United Arab Emirates And The United States," Discussion Papers 2005-15, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    3. Hong, Kessely & Bohnet, Iris, 2007. "Status and distrust: The relevance of inequality and betrayal aversion," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 197-213, April.
    4. Murnighan, J. Keith & Wang, Long, 2016. "The social world as an experimental game," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 80-94.
    5. Calabuig, Vicente & Fatas, Enrique & Olcina, Gonzalo & Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael, 2016. "Carry a big stick, or no stick at all," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 153-171.
    6. James Andreoni, 2018. "Satisfaction Guaranteed: When Moral Hazard Meets Moral Preferences," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 159-189, November.
    7. Jason Aimone & Daniel Houser, 2012. "What you don’t know won’t hurt you: a laboratory analysis of betrayal aversion," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(4), pages 571-588, December.
    8. Camerer, Colin F. & Ho, Teck-Hua, 2015. "Behavioral Game Theory Experiments and Modeling," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    9. Ellingsen, Tore & Mohlin, Erik, 2019. "Decency," Working Papers 2019:3, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    10. Ernst Fehr, 2009. "On The Economics and Biology of Trust," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 235-266, 04-05.
    11. Bohnet, Iris & Greig, Fiona & Herrmann, Benedikt & Zeckhauser, 2006. "Betrayal Aversion on Four Continents," Working Paper Series rwp06-005, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    12. Alpízar, Francisco & Nordén, Anna & Pfaff, Alexander & Robalino, Juan, 2017. "Spillovers from targeting of incentives: Exploring responses to being excluded," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 87-98.
    13. Engle-Warnick, Jim & Slonim, Robert L., 2004. "The evolution of strategies in a repeated trust game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 553-573, December.
    14. Ernst Fehr & John A. List, 2004. "The Hidden Costs and Returns of Incentives-Trust and Trustworthiness Among CEOs," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(5), pages 743-771, September.
    15. Schwerter, Frederik & Zimmermann, Florian, 2020. "Determinants of trust: The role of personal experiences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 413-425.
    16. Croson, Rachel & Gächter, Simon, 2010. "The science of experimental economics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 122-131, January.
    17. Al-Ississ, Mohamad & Bohnet, Iris, 2016. "Risk mitigation and trust: Experimental Evidence from Jordan and the United States," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 83-98.
    18. Rotemberg, Julio J., 2008. "Minimally acceptable altruism and the ultimatum game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 66(3-4), pages 457-476, June.
    19. Michael Kosfeld & Armin Falk, 2006. "The Hidden Costs of Control," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1611-1630, December.
    20. Ola Kvaløy & Miguel Luzuriaga, 2014. "Playing the trust game with other people’s money," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(4), pages 615-630, December.

    More about this item

    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:ecl:harjfk:rwp10-031. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ksharus.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.