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on Evolutionary Economics |
| By: | Michal Bauer; Julie Chytilová; Eric Ochieng |
| Abstract: | Animosity towards followers of other faiths fuels inter-group conflicts. In order to study the role of religious leaders in shaping pro-sociality within their churches, we directly elicit a rich set of ingroup-out-group biases among pastors (N=200) and members of their churches (N=800) in Kenya, using controlled allocation tasks. We document remarkable heterogeneity in preferences across religious leaders, with one type treating all recipients equally independently of their religious beliefs and the second type severely discriminating against Muslims and non-religious individuals. In line with cultural transmission models, we find that: (i) pastors aim to instill their preferences in church members, (ii) church members follow leaders in an experiment that exogenously provides information about leaders’ behavior, and (iii) preferences of church members are robustly positively related to the preferences of their religious leader, especially among those with greater exposure to the leader. Together, our findings suggest that differences in preferences of religious leaders spill over and create distinct social groups with contrasting moral views how to treat out-group members. |
| Keywords: | Religious leaders, Tolerance, Parochialism, Discrimination, Social preferences, Cultural transmission |
| JEL: | C93 D74 J15 Z12 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp789 |
| By: | Alexandre Truc (GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur); Dorian Jullien (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UP1 UFR02 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - École d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the controversy on Fehr and Schmidt's model of inequity aversion. It borrows insights from disciplines such as philosophy and the sociology of science that have specialized in studying scientific controversies. Our goal is to contribute to the historical and methodological literature on behavioral economics, which happens to have neglected behavioral economists' research on social preferences. Our analysis of the controversy reveals some new insights about the relation of behavioral economics with other sub-fields in economics, as well as with other disciplines. |
| Keywords: | Controversies, Behavioral Economics, Rhetoric, Social Preferences, Norms, Inequity Aversion |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-04719263 |
| By: | Mickael Melki; Hillel Rapoport; Enrico Spolaore; Romain Wacziarg |
| Abstract: | We argue that migrants played a significant role in the diffusion of the demographic transition from France to the rest of Europe in the late 19th century. Employing novel data on French immigration from other European regions from 1850 to 1930, we find that higher immigration to France translated into lower fertility in the region of origin after a few decades - both in cross-region regressions for various periods, and in a panel setting with region fixed effects. These results are robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls, and across multiple specifications. We also find that immigrants who themselves became French citizens achieved lower fertility, particularly those who moved to French regions with the lowest fertility levels. We interpret these findings in terms of cultural remittances, consistently with insights from a theoretical framework where migrants act as vectors of cultural diffusion, spreading new information, social norms and preferences pertaining to modern fertility to their regions of origin. |
| JEL: | J13 N33 Z10 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32990 |
| By: | Benjamin Enke; Thomas Graeber; Ryan Oprea; Jeffrey Yang |
| Abstract: | We report a large-scale examination of behavioral attenuation: due to information-processing constraints, the elasticity of people’s decisions with respect to economic fundamentals is generally too small. We implement more than 30 experiments, 20 of which were crowd-sourced from leading experts. These experiments cover a broad range of economic decisions, from choice and valuation to belief formation, from strategic games to generic optimization problems, involving investment, savings, effort supply, product demand, taxes, environmental externalities, fairness, cooperation, beauty contests, information disclosure, search, policy evaluation, memory, forecasting and inference. In 93% of our experiments, the elasticity of decisions to fundamentals decreases in participants’ cognitive uncertainty, our measure of the severity of information-processing constraints. Moreover, in decision problems with objective solutions, we observe elasticities that are universally smaller than is optimal. Many widely-studied decision anomalies represent special cases of behavioral attenuation. We discuss both its limits and why it often gives rise to the classic phenomenon of diminishing sensitivity. |
| JEL: | D03 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32973 |