Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/262159 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Citation: 
[Journal:] Games and Economic Behavior [ISSN:] 0899-8256 [Volume:] 88 [Publisher:] Elsevier [Place:] Amsterdam [Year:] 2014 [Pages:] 298-309
Publisher: 
Elsevier, Amsterdam
Abstract: 
In many economic contexts, an elusive variable of interest is the agent's belief about relevant events, e.g. about other agents' behavior. A growing number of surveys and experiments asks participants to state beliefs explicitly but little is known about the causal relation between beliefs and actions. This paper discusses the possibility of creating exogenous instrumental variables for belief statements, by informing the agent about exogenous manipulations of the relevant events. We conduct trust game experiments where the amount sent back by the second player (trustee) is exogenously varied. The procedure allows detecting causal links from beliefs to actions under plausible assumptions. The IV-estimated effect is significant, confirming the causal role of beliefs.
Subjects: 
social capital
trust game
instrumental variables
belief elicitation
JEL: 
C72
C81
C91
D84
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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