CeDEx Seminar - Sigrid Suetens (Tilburg University)

Location
A40 Sir Clive Granger Building
Date(s)
Wednesday 5th April 2017 (14:00-15:00)
Description

Return on trust is lower for immigrants

Trustworthiness is key for successful economic and social interactions. We conduct an experiment with a representative sample of the Dutch population to study whether trustworthiness depends on the ethnicity of the interaction partner. Native trustees play trust games with an anonymous other, who is either another native or an immigrant. We find that the trustees reciprocate trust up to 12% less if the trustor is an immigrant than if he/she is native. This percentage increases up to 23% for trustees who report disliking ethnic diversity in society in an independent survey. Since the decision to reciprocate does not involve any behavioral risk, we take our results as evidence of taste-based discrimination. The implication is that the return on trust is lower for immigrants than for native Dutch.

Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics

Sir Clive Granger Building
University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0)115 951 5458
Enquiries: jose.guinotsaporta@nottingham.ac.uk
Experiments: cedex@nottingham.ac.uk