Portal Red Investigadores de Economía

General

This paper explores the extent to which individuals trust, reciprocate, cooperate, and pool risk. We use a battery of field experiments containing the trust game, the voluntary contribution mechanism, and the risk-pooling game, which we apply in six capital cities in Latin America. A salient feature of the paper is that the data is representative of the population from the six cities: Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Montevideo, Lima, and San José. The results support three findings: the propensiTY to trust and cooperate among Latin Americans is, on average, remarkably similar to that found in other regions of the world; expectations about the behavior of other players are the main driver of trust, reciprocity. and cooperation; and the behaviors associated with socialization, trust, and cooperation are strongly linked among them.

To What Extent Do Latin Americans Trust, Reciprocate, and Cooperate? Evidence from Experiments in Six Latin American Countries