| Preferences, poverty, and politics: Experimental and survey data from Vietnam (2009) | |||||||||||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||||||||||
| We conducted choice experiments in Vietnamese villages to investigate how wealth, political history, occupation, and other demographic variables (from a comprehensive earlier household survey) are correlated with risk, time discounting and trust measured in experiments. In villages with higher mean income, people are less loss-averse and more patient. Results from a trust game demonstrate people in the south are more altruistic toward the poor: they invest more in the poor without expecting repayment. This pattern is consistent with the idea that private norms of redistribution from rich to poor are active in the south but are crowded out in the north possibly by communist public institutions, although we observe a strong overall positive effect of communism on reciprocity across all income groups. Our findings also suggest market activities, like starting a small trade business, are correlated with trust and trustworthiness. The experiments also expand methodology by using choices that separate different aspects of risk aversion and time preferences as suggested by earlier behavioral economics experiments. | |||||||||||||||||
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