Businesses often engage in long-term relationships with  firms and people they trust and know, in which they  informally sell and exchange information and services  (Baker, Gibbons, & Murphy, 2002). As postulated by  Arrow (1972, p. 357), “virtually every commercial trans￾action has within itself an element of trust”. Within these  relations, trust is defined as the belief that market actors  adhere to informal contract arrangements. Particularly  in lower-income countries, which are often described by  distortions – such as inefficient institutions (e.g., contract  enforcement), imperfect markets (e.g., access to credit),  and market distortions created by firms (e.g., lobbying)  (Atkin & Khandelwal, 2020) – such relational contracts  are important for commercial interactions locally and  internationally and are an important complement to  formal contracts.