Beliefs and actions in the trust game: Creating instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Costa-Gomes, Miguel A.; Huck, Steffen; Weizsaecker, Georg
• 署名单位: University of St Andrews; Humboldt University of Berlin
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2014.10.006
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 298-309
• 关键词: Social capital; Trust game; instrumental variables; belief elicitation

摘要

In many economic contexts, an elusive variable of interest is the agent's belief about relevant events, e.g. about other agents' behavior. A growing number of surveys and experiments asks participants to state beliefs explicitly but little is known about the causal relation between beliefs and actions. This paper discusses the possibility of creating exogenous instrumental variables for belief statements, by informing the agent about exogenous manipulations of the relevant events. We conduct trust game experiments where the amount sent back by the second player (trustee) is exogenously varied. The procedure allows detecting causal links from beliefs to actions under plausible assumptions. The IV-estimated effect is significant, confirming the causal role of beliefs. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.