A Replication That Failed - on the Computational Model in 'Michael W. Macy and Yoshimichi Sato: Trust, Cooperation and Market Formation in the U.S. and Japan. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 2002'

The article describes how and why we failed to replicate main effects of a computational model that Michael Macy and Yoshimichi Sato published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (May 2002). The model is meant to answer a fundamental question about social life: Why, when and how is it possible to build trust with distant people? Based on their model, Macy and Sato warn the US society about an imminent danger: the possible break down of trust caused by too much social mobility. But the computational evidence for exactly that result turned out not to be replicable.