Trust in cohesive communities

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Balmaceda, Felipe; Escobar, Juan F.
• 署名单位: Universidad de Chile
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2017.05.005
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 289-318
• 关键词: Repeated games; social networks; Cohesiveness

摘要

This paper studies which social networks maximize trust and welfare when agreements are implicitly enforced. We study a repeated trust game in which trading opportunities arise exogenously and a social network determines the information each player has. The main contribution of the paper is the characterization of optimal networks under alternative assumptions about how information flows across a network. When a defection is observed only by the victim's connections, cohesive networks are Pareto efficient as they allow players to coordinate their punishments to attain high equilibrium payoffs. In contrast, when a defection is observed by the victim's direct and indirect connections, barely connected networks maximize the number of players that can punish a defection and are therefore efficient. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.