Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-2-2021
Abstract
We conduct trust games in three villages in a northeastern Romanian commune. From 1775–1919, these villages were arbitrarily assigned to opposite sides of the Austrian and Ottoman/Russian border despite being located seven kilometers apart. This plausibly exogenous border assignment affected local institutions and late-18th century migration in a manner that likely also affected trust. Conditional on trust norms being affected by these centuries-old historical circumstances, our experimental design tests the degree to which such norms are transmitted intergenerationally. Consistent with theoretical predictions, we find that participants on the Austrian side that also have family roots in the village are indeed more likely to trust outsiders.
Recommended Citation
Karaja, E., & Rubin, J. (2022). The cultural transmission of trust norms: Evidence from a lab in the field on a natural experiment. Journal of Comparative Economics, 50(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2021.07.003
Supplementary data
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
Elsevier
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
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Comments
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Comparative Economics. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Comparative Economics, volume 50, issue 1, in 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2021.07.003
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