Building trust: The costs and benefits of gradualism
研究了在无限期、信息不对称和不同信任水平下，渐进策略对信任建立和经济收益的影响，发现渐进主义有时会降低总收益，并实验分析了其促进或抑制效率的条件。
We examine the prevalence of gradualist strategies and their effect on trust-building and economic gains in a setting with an infinite horizon, asymmetric information regarding the trustworthiness of receivers, and various levels of trust. The theoretical literature suggests that gradualist strategies mitigate asymmetric information problems and foster trust-building. However, we theoretically and experimentally show that gradualism sometimes reduces joint payoffs relative to a simple “binary” setting in which trust is an all-or-nothing decision. In a series of experiments, we vary the degree of asymmetric information as well as the economic returns to trusting behavior, and delineate circumstances under which gradualism may promote or curb efficiency.