The Complementarity Between Trust and Contract Enforcement
通过实验发现，信任与合同执行并非替代关系，而是互补的：更强的执行力度反而让信任更能促进合作，这对政策制定有重要启示。
Abstract Agreements are rarely fully enforceable, exposing trading parties to the risk of exploitation. In such cases, trust—defined as the belief in the trustworthiness of others—may be key to realizing gains from trade. This paper asks whether trust substitutes for or complements contract enforcement. While intuition may suggest trust matters more when enforcement is weak, our experiment, which exogenously varies both trust and enforcement, shows it can matter more when enforcement is strong. The mechanism is equilibrium selection: stronger enforcement allows more equilibria, and trust helps select efficient ones. This complementarity between trust and enforcement has important policy implications.