Economists have developed a vast empirical literature on how cultural traits like generalized trust affect economic output. Much of this literature finds a positive causal relationship between measures of generalized trust, as gathered by international surveys, and economic output. However, the trust literature commits five deadly empirical and theoretical sins that undermine many of its findings. From the quality of the survey questions and responses to the paucity of theoretical models used to explain how trust affects economic outcomes to the radically different results from experimental evidence and others, the trust literature is riven with poor methods and bad data. Even so, applying common methods used in the trust literature to regional level analysis in the United States during the 1972–2018 period reveals no statistically significant correlation between economic output and trust. Given our lack of findings at the subnational level, we find further evidence to be skeptical of the trust literature.

中文翻译：

---

信任在美国地区经济发展中没有发挥任何作用——以及信任文献的其他五个问题

经济学家已经开发了大量关于普遍信任等文化特征如何影响经济产出的实证文献。许多文献发现，国际调查收集的普遍信任措施与经济产出之间存在积极的因果关系。然而，信托文献犯下了五项致命的经验和理论错误，破坏了许多研究结果。从调查问题和回答的质量到缺乏用于解释信任如何影响经济结果的理论模型，再到实验证据和其他证据得出的截然不同的结果，信任文献充斥着糟糕的方法和糟糕的数据。即使是这样，将信任文献中使用的常用方法应用于 1972 年至 2018 年期间美国的区域层面分析，发现经济产出与信任之间没有统计上显着的相关性。鉴于我们缺乏地方层面的调查结果，我们发现进一步的证据对信任文献表示怀疑。