When is trust robust?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Anderlini, Luca; Samuelson, Larry; Terlizzese, Daniele
• 署名单位: Georgetown University; University of Naples Federico II; Yale University
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2024.11.015
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 34-47
• 关键词: trust; Robustness; fragility; assimilation; disruption

摘要

We examine an economy in which interactions are more productive if agents can trust others to refrain from cheating. Some agents are scoundrels, who cheat at every opportunity, while others cheat only if the cost of cheating, a decreasing function of the proportion of cheaters, is sufficiently low. The economy exhibits multiple equilibria. As the proportion of scoundrels in the economy declines, the high-trust equilibrium can be disrupted by arbitrarily small perturbations or by arbitrarily small infusions of low-trust agents, while the low-trust equilibrium becomes impervious to perturbations and infusions of high-trust agents. Scoundrels may thus have the effect of making trust more robust.