Along with the recent global financial crises there has been a resurgence of scholarship that has turned to analyze the social and political implications of business cycles in contemporary democracies. However, little research has been dedicated to the potential effect of recessions on social capital. By taking advantage of an experiment embedded in a panel survey, this paper addresses the question of the causal effect of individual economic situation on one of its essential ingredients, namely trust among people. By means of a longitudinal design and behavioral measures, it overcomes the problems of preceding research and explores the impact of job loss on the individual change in actual behavior. The study also investigates the role of the system’s political performance by considering among others the role of perceived corruption in explaining people reluctance to cooperate while controlling for other traditional cultural suspects. In this way, it provides a compelling test of main theories on the origins of social capital within a political community. Data were collected through an online panel survey carried out in Spain in 2012.