Whether a buyer transacts hinges on a threshold of perceived seller honesty

Evidence

I conclude that if the seller’s reputation for honesty is high — specifically if p exceeds 8 — the potential buyer will engage in a transaction. If it is low — specifically if p is less than 6 — he will not enter and there will not be a sale. Each party will receive nothing in this case. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 922

Categorization

• XREF: The threshold structure — trust only above an observable cutoff — dovetails with the reader’s Saramago reading where collapsed monitoring drives p below the operating threshold, freezing all transactions.