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(DP 2012-19) What Determines Trust? Human Capital vs. Social Institutions: Evidence from Manila and Moscow

UPSE Discussion Papers

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Title (DP 2012-19) What Determines Trust? Human Capital vs. Social Institutions: Evidence from Manila and Moscow
 
Creator Nye, John V.C.; Department of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA, and Laboratory for
Institutional Analysis of Economic Reforms, Higher School of Economics, Moscow,
Russia
Androuschak, Gregory; Laboratory for Institutional Analysis of Economic Reforms, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
Desierto, Desiree; University of the Philippines School of Economics, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines
Jones, Garett; Department of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
Yudkevich, Maria; Laboratory for Institutional Analysis of Economic Reforms, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
 
Subject —
 
Description It is now well established that highly developed countries tend to score well on measures of social capital and have higher levels of generalized trust. In turn, the willingness to trust has been shown to be correlated with various social and environmental factors (e.g. institutions, culture) on one hand, and accumulated human capital on the other. To what extent is an individual’s trust driven by contemporaneous institutions and environmental conditions and to what extent is it determined by the individual’s human capital? We collect data from students in Moscow and Manila and use the variation in their height and gender to instrument for measures of their human capital to identify the causal effect of the latter on trust. We find that human capital positively affects the propensity to trust, and its contribution appears larger than the combined effect of other omitted variables including, plausibly, social and environmental factors.
 
Publisher UPSE Discussion Papers
 
Contributor —
 
Date 2012-11-26
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://www.econ.upd.edu.ph/dp/index.php/dp/article/view/702
 
Source UPSE Discussion Papers; 2012
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://www.econ.upd.edu.ph/dp/index.php/dp/article/view/702/173