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Andreas Bergh. Photo.

Andreas Bergh

Senior lecturer

Andreas Bergh. Photo.

A sticky trait: Social trust among Swedish expatriates in countries with varying institutional quality

Author

  • Andreas Bergh
  • Richard Öhrvall

Summary, in English

Social trust is linked to many desirable economic and social outcomes. Using new data from a representative sample of 2668 Swedish expatriates, we examine the robustness of high social trust in countries with different levels of institutional quality. The results suggest that individual trust decreases with length of stay in countries with high corruption and low rule of law. The effect is relatively small and driven by expatriates who were aged 30 years or below upon arrival to the new country. While other studies have found that trust among migrants adapts to destination country trust levels, we find that after the (approximate) age of 30, high trust is a sticky personality trait. The results are robust to controlling for a large array of individual characteristics (including age) and support the view that social trust is sensitive to events that occur early in life.

Department/s

  • Centre for Economic Demography
  • Department of Economics

Publishing year

2018-12

Language

English

Pages

1146-1157

Publication/Series

Journal of Comparative Economics

Volume

46

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Economics
  • Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)

Keywords

  • Social trust
  • institutions
  • corruption
  • rule of law

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0147-5967