In this paper we explore the relationship between ethnic fractionalization and social capital. First, we test for time differences in the impact of ethnic fractionalization on social capital using U.S. data from 1990, 1997 and 2005. Subsequently we examine the data for evidence of the conflict,...

This paper provides field experimental evidence on the prevalence and determinants of discrimination and in-group favoritism in trust decisions. We observe choices of about 1,000 inhabitants of the city of Zurich who take part in a sequential trust game, in which first movers can condition their...

In this paper we develop a new empirical approach to uncovering the impact of social attitudes on economic development. We first show that trust of second-generation Americans is significantly influenced by the country of origin of their forebears. In the spirit of the epidemiology literature,...

In one-shot investment game experiments where each player's payo is a convexcombination of own and other's prot, trust remains unaected by the extent of interdependencewhereas trustworthiness reacts positively to it.

The present research experimentally examines the ininfluence of groupidentity on trust behavior in an investment game. In one treatment,group identity is manipulated only through the creation of artificial(minimal) groups. In other treatments group members are additionallyrelated by outcome...

We compared the behavior of groups and individuals in a two-person trust game. The first mover in this game, the sender, receives an endowment and can send any part of it to the responder; the amount sent is tripled, and the responder can then return to the sender any portion of the tripled sum....

This paper investigates in a principal-agent environment whether and how group membership influences the effectiveness of incentives and when incentives can have “hidden costs”, i.e., a detrimental effect. We show experimentally that in all interactions control mechanisms can have hidden...

Trust is a crucial component of social capital. We use an experimental moonlighting game with a representative sample of the U.S. population, oversampling immigrants, to study trust, positive, and negative reciprocity between first-generation immigrants and native-born Americans as a measure of...