Search Results
Speech
Beyond the crisis: reflections on the challenges
Remarks at the Foreign Policy Association Corporate Dinner, New York City
Discussion Paper
Deciding to distrust
We employ experiments to illustrate one factor contributing to the lack of distrust in the recent corporate scandals: Trust rather than no trust was the default. People are more trusting when the default is full trust than when it is no trust. We introduce a new game, the distrust game (DTG), where the default is full trust and find that in it, trust levels are higher than in the Berg, Dickhaut, and McCabe (1995) trust game (TG), where the default is no trust. At the same time, trustworthiness levels are lower in the DTG than in the TG. Agents (second movers) punish distrust more in the DTG ...
Working Paper
Credit Scores, Social Capital, and Stock Market Participation
While a rapidly growing body of research underscores the influence of social capital on financial decisions and economic developments, objective data-based measurements of social capital are lacking. We introduce average credit scores as an indicator of a community's social capital and present evidence that this measure is consistent with, but richer and more robust than, those used in the existing literature, such as electoral participation, blood donations, and survey-based measures. Merging unique proprietary credit score data with two nationwide representative household surveys, we show ...
Report
Public trust and government betrayal
This paper presents a simple model of government reputation which captures two characteristics of policy outcomes in less developed countries: governments which betray public trust do so erratically, and, after a betrayal, public trust is regained only gradually.
Report
Stereotypes and madrassas: experimental evidence from Pakistan
Madrassas (Islamic religious seminaries) have been alleged to be responsible for fostering Islamic extremism and violence, and for indoctrinating their students in narrow worldviews. However, we know very little about the behavior of Madrassa students, and how other groups in their communities interact with them. To investigate this, we use unique experimental and survey data that we collected in Madrassas and other educational institutions in Pakistan. We randomly match male students from institutions of three distinct religious tendencies and socioeconomic background?Madrassas, Islamic ...