A. GARY ANDERSON
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
CENTER FOR SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE ORGANIZATIONS
RESEARCH SEMINAR SERIES
Professor Paul J. Zak
Professor Paul J. Zak
Assistant Professor of Economics
Claremont University, Department of Economics
Building Trust: Public Policy, Interpersonal
Trust, and Economic Development
(joint paper with Stephen
Knack)
Zak and Knack (2001) demonstrate that interpersonal trust substantially
impacts economic growth, and that sufficient interpersonal trust
is necessary for economic development. To investigate the ability
of policy-makers to affect trust levels, this paper builds a
formal model characterizing public policies that can raise
trust. The model is used to derive optimal funding for
trust-raising policies when policy-makers seek to stimulate
economic growth. Policies examined include those that increase
freedom of association, build civic cultures, enhance judicial
contract enforcement, reduce income inequality, and raise
educational levels. Testing the model's predictions for a sample
of 43 countries, we find very few policies raise trust
sufficiently vis-a-vis their costs to warrant policy action as
part of a program of economic development.
Friday, November 30, 2001, 10 am-11:30 am
Room 021, Anderson Hall, UC Riverside
Copies of the
the paper to
be presented are available at
http://www.goldmark.org/livia/misc/zak-trust.pdf or from Prof.
Lívia Markóczy, Livia.Markoczy@ucr.edu, Anderson Hall,
Rm 221, 787-3908
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On 26 Nov 2001, 11:47.