This paper revisits old questions of the proper subject and bounds of economics: Does economics study “provisioning”? or markets? or a method of reasoning, self-interested rational optimization? A variety of scholars and others in many fields make use of a taxonomy of society consisting of...

Studies have shown that there are differences in cooperative behavior across countries. Furthermore, differences in the use and the reaction on the introduction of a norm enforcement mechansism have been documented in cross-cultural studies, recently. We present data which prove that stark...

Is social capital always important for economic growth? A number of recent micro studies suggest that interpersonal trust and social capital will have its greatest impact on economic performance when court institutions are relatively weak. The conventional wisdom from macro studies, however, is...

In a representative Swedish sample people were asked to judge the relative extent that different groups of people are considered trustworthy in several dimensions, including their political views and reading habits. A statistically significant effect of similarity on perceived trustworthiness...

Unless people pay the taxes they are obliged to pay, a general welfare state will eventually collapse. Thus, for the welfare state to survive in the long run, tax compliance is of utmost importance. Using Swedish individual survey data we analyze which factors affect the perception of tax...

Levels of trust are measured by asking standard survey questions on trust and by observing the behaviour in a trust game using a random sample in rural Bangladesh. Follow-up questions and correlations between the sent amount in the trust game and stated expectations reveal that the amount sent...

Trust is measured using both survey questions and a standard trust experiment using a random sample of individuals in rural Bangladesh. We found no significant effect of the social distance between Hindus and Muslims in the trust experiment in terms of fractions sent or returned, but the...

In a trust game conducted in rural Bangladesh, the proportion of money sent decreased significantly with the stake size. Still, even with very large stakes few followed the conventional economic prediction and sent nothing. <p>