The general objective of this work is to verify the effect that the level of trust can have on the socio-economic development of developed and developing countries. In view of this, the specific objectives are: to identify the relationship between trust and social capital and intellectual capital and to verify the degree of trust in the selected countries. To this end, Alain Peyrefitte's theoretical framework was adopted. From this perspective, trust can be considered a cultural factor that explains social and economic development, as opposed to material factors such as capital and labor. As for the methodological procedures, the panel data technique was used to estimate the impact of trust, together with the education and R&D investment variables, on GDP per capita. For this study, the data sources used were the World Bank and World Valeus Survey (WVS) databases for the years 2009, 2014 and 2020. The results of the econometric analysis indicate that trust was statistically significant in terms of variations in GDP per capita in conjunction with the level of education of the population aged 25 and over who have completed at least secondary education and investment in I&D. The implications of these results indicate that trust, in association with other variables, should be considered in studies on the economic development of countries, especially when considering its relationship with social capital and intellectual capital.
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