The determinants of trust: A cross-country analysis

Trust is definitely one of the most important components of social capital and of organizational life. It is a central requirement for several processes of innovation that depend on teamwork and cooperation between different involved parties. Trust must be built and cultivated and yet the process to achieve this is not well known. In order to built and cultivate trust, one ought to understand first what are the factors that determine trust. Though little has been done to find out what determines trust in aggregated terms. In this work we will try to answer this problem by considering three groups of determinants - demographic, cultural and macroeconomic - and by performing an econometric analysis, using three different linear regression models. Final results are a valuable contribution for the design of policies aimed at the improvement of trust and thus quality and reliability. For instances, we found that young people, the level of education, the cultural homogeneity and the women's representativeness are relevant factors determining the aggregated level of trust, as well as the GDP per capita, the income (in)equality, the unemployment variation and the rule of law.