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SSRN Electronic Journal

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.1491500

Elsevier, Journal of Public Economics, 7-8(96), p. 635-643, 2012

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2012.04.003

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Microfoundations of Social Capital

Journal article published in 2009 by Christian Thöni ORCID, Jean-Robert Tyran, Erik Roland Wengström
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Question mark in circle
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Question mark in circle
Postprint: policy unknown
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Question mark in circle
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Abstract

We show that the standard trust question routinely used in social capital research is importantly related to cooperation behavior and we provide a microfoundation for this relation. We run a large-scale public goods experiment over the internet in Denmark and find that the trust question is a proxy for cooperation preferences rather than beliefs about others' cooperation. To disentangle the preference and belief channels, we run a (standard) public goods game in which beliefs matter for cooperation choices and one (using the strategy method) in which they do not matter. We show that the "fairness question", a recently proposed alternative to the "trust question", is also related to cooperation behavior but operates through beliefs rather than preferences.