Warranties substitute for trust by making reliability claims credible

Evidence

Since — G is negative we are making the natural assumption that buying a lemon is worse than not buying a car at all. To be sure, salesmen usually offer warranties and the like, but they are a means of making the salesman’s (or manufacturer’s) Claims about the reliability of the car credible. I am for the moment thinking of situations where such options are not available to the salesman, because I am discussing trust. Even when warranties are available, there is always the residual chance of being saddled with a lemon. Naturally, I want to consider such situations. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 891

Categorization

• DEFINE: Positions trust as the informal, unwarrantied alternative to credibility-creating devices — a clean definitional contrast.
• XREF: Warranties as substitutes for trust echo Hardin: observable constraints (formal guarantees) step in exactly where trust-based observation is absent. In Saramago, no warranty exists — only the doctor’s wife’s sight.