Empirical Analysis of Generalized Trust in Modern Russia

Today the concept of trust plays an important role in economics, but there is a lack of both works devoted to the determinants of generalized trust in modern Russia and relationships between the crises and trust. The Russian economy has suffered several significant recessions in recent years, the most serious of which were crises of 2008 and 2014. It would be interesting to check whether there was a trust change after these events in Russia. The current study has two purposes: the first one is to identify determinants of trust in modern Russia, the second one is to check whether the economic crises of 2008-2009 and 2014-2015 affected the level of generalized trust with the assumption that only population of working age was affected. The study is based on the RLMS-HSE survey. For the purposes of this paper the random-effects ordered logistic models and difference-in-difference ordered logistic models are used. We conclude that the most important determinants of trust are political confidence, age, living in a countryside, higher education; the 2008 crisis did not make influence on trust, where as the 2014 crisis affected on the trust in a positive direction due to the “propaganda effect”.