Reassessing the Relationship between Trust and Growth

This paper analyzes the intertemporal variation of trust on economic growth. Constructing a unique global country panel dataset and applying a system-generalized method of moments (SYSGMM) estimation approach to a sample of 75 market economies over a 40-year time span (1980-2019), this paper finds evidence of a causal curvilinear (inverted U-shape) relationship between trust and growth. This relationship corroborates earlier panel data results but challenges findings that posit a general positive relationship between trust and growth. Only a minority of global economies can attain a position close to or above the optimum threshold for trust and growth. Most economies, in fact, fall well below that threshold, and for them, it is incumbent upon their policymakers to consider trust-building measures in order to achieve higher growth. In countries that are close to the optimum threshold, however, such policies can likely be neglected. In fact, in countries where trust levels exceed the optimum, an increase in trust might even hamper growth.