Abstract
We explore the causal effects of institutions on trust and prosocial behaviour. A vexing problem for scholars of these questions is the classic difficulty of identifying causation. Institutional variation tends to be endogenous to many outcomes of interest. When experiments are possible, they often occur in highly artificial settings. To overcome these challenges we analyse data from an RCT in which property rights (exclusive use land rights) were randomly assigned among a large population of Mongolian nomadic herders. Our outcomes of interest are generalized trust and prosocial behaviour measured in several games. We have have measures of these both shortly after treatment was assigned as well five years later. Our results indicate a modest effect in the immediate short term but that these effects do not endure and we have robustly estimated null effects at the five year point.
The seminar will be held in room 1249 (12th floor) at Eilert Sundts Hus. The address is Moltke Moes vei 31.