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Abstract

This paper discusses the importance of trust to economic transactions and risk-mitigation, andinvestigates the degree of compliance of individual behaviors to engender trust andreciprocity, through a behavioral approach, to understand the pervasiveness of such essentialeconomic ethic in everyday economic transactions.The methodology of this study assessesthe behavior of the subject pool (players representative of Muslims and non-Muslims)through a Trust Game that was designed to test how entrenched trust and reciprocity are inmodern societies. The game is an experiment in decision-making to measure trust ineconomic decisions and to demonstrate that trust is as fundamental to economic transactionsas self-interest. The concept of trust and reciprocity can be complex when taken into accountits relationship with risk that is not readily quantified, especially in a highly uncertainsituation. For this experiment, in terms of trust and reciprocity, both Muslims and non- Muslims performed well, although Muslims performed a little bit better than non-Muslims.There were no significant differences between the primed and unprimed subjects. Whileempirical studies have demonstrated the importance of trust and ethics in economicdevelopment, they do not demonstrate how deep religious understanding in human behaviorfor mutually beneficial decision-making. This paper attempts to address this concern so as touse religious values in productive economic behaviors, like mitigating risk in uncertaintythrough trust and reciprocity in risk-sharing. This paper provides an actual behavioralinvestigation into how people behave in real life as compared to what their religion prescribesto them.