Exploring the influence of cultural aspects in country performance with game theory: the case of Finland and Portugal

Abstract

The relations between cooperation, trust and economic performance have been studied for some years. It was already assumed that companies that cooperate with other companies have higher outcomes, in other words, companies that keep strategic alliances with other companies have better performance. However, cooperative relationships among companies need trust. The main goal of our study was to explore and understand if there are differences in altruism, cooperation, trust, trustworthiness, competitiveness, social sanction and attitude toward risk in Portuguese and Finnish people. The literature shows there are people who easily trust more than others and there are people who are more prone to cooperate. Why is this? Since genetic influences are not plausible (cooperation and trust pervades the human species), the causes may be cultural. The answer to this question can be addressed by comparing subjects from both countries while they perform games from Game theory. We decided to apply the Dictator Game combined with a Third Party Punishment Game, to study altruism and social sanction, Trust Game to study trust and trustworthiness, Competition Game to measure competitiveness, Risk Game to analyze attitude toward risk and propensity to invest, and, lastly, Prisoner’s Dilemma to study cooperation. In our study we found that Portuguese people are more altruistic but also more competitive than Finnish people. However, with regards to trustworthiness, Finnish people have higher trustworthiness than Portuguese people. Another interesting finding is that Finnish people invest more than Portuguese people and have higher propensity to punish, than Portuguese people do.