Trust Thy Neighbor: Comparing Trust Behavior between Northern and Southern Vietnam

Sammanfattning: This thesis aims to explore how trust behavior varies between northern and southern Vietnam, in order to improve our understanding of what is required to increase economic performance in the developing world. We use economic experiments with university students to study differences in deception, trust and trustworthiness between northern and southern Vietnam; two regions with different income levels and different degrees of market integration. We also study the correlation between deception and trust. Our findings do not confirm any differences, on the contrary, they indicate that overall trust behavior is fairly similar between the two regions and that deception is not correlated with trust. Our findings also suggest that there are gender differences in deception, trust and trustworthiness in northern Vietnam.