The issue of trust has recently attracted growing attention in researc
h on work relations, capital - owner relations, cultural influences on
the economic structures of different countries, and other topics. Thi
s paper analyzes a simple experiment on trust and the reward of trust.
Mr A is endowed with DM 80. He decides to trust Ms B (and give her hi
s money) or not. Ms B is able to double the sum of money (if she gets
it) and can then decide to give back as much as she likes. In an exper
iment, 76% of subjects A decided to trust. The average reward they rec
eived was DM 79.2 which is not significantly different from DM 80, the
value of mistrust; nor was the average reward different from the aver
age expectations of subjects A, i.e. a weak variant of the Rational Ex
pectations Hypothesis is supported. In the paper we also look for diff
erences between trusting and mistrusting A-subjects, for behavioral no
rms, and other determinants of rewards.