Research on "trust" now forms a prominent part of the research agenda in history and the social sciences. Although this … research has generated useful insights, the idea of trust has been used so widely and loosely that it risks creating more … confusion than clarity. This essay argues that to the extent that scholars have a clear idea of what trust actually means, the …

mean by confidenceʺ, what the differences between optimism and confidence are and how the onset of confidence can possibly … be explained. Also, we analyze the economic effects of a lack of or the erosion of confidence. The paper intends to … provide a comprehensive view on the major effects of confidence on economic growth, the business cycle, its relation to income …

This paper explores the determinants of social trust, as measured by perceived honesty, in 48 US states across three … popular alternative theories. The trust decline in recent decades is found to have been a consequence of increasing social … polarization and the natural decline of the most trusting age cohorts. Residual trust has increased since the early 1970s, giving …