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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
| By: | Paula Pavarina |
| Abstract: | Economic theory has proposed and discussed a lot of possible factors or explanations that promote or foster economic development. One of these gathers specific discussions from other Social Sciences, incorporating social, cultural, religious, institutional and political dimensions – and among them, the idea of 'social capital'. Although the discussion held by Putnam on the benefits of association, civic involvement and interpersonal trust is extremely rich, this paper incorporates the discussion advocated by the World Bank, and the central ideas of Woolcock and Narayan papers, since they extend the scope of analysis, making what is called 'synergic vision' of social capital. These authors consider that 'social capital does not exist in a political vacuum', ie there is no way to separate the elements that characterize the social and the political and institutional elements that surround it. The ‘community social capital’ of Putnam cannot be understood without the macro-environment in which it operates. Then this paper aims to explain the economic behavior in Latin America, considering the importance of the attributes directly related to social capital (interpersonal trust, which leads to the association and the civic involvement) pari passu governance, ie the formal attributes related to the action of the state, which establishes social, political and economic behavior. It wants to explain if these two dimensions are correlated in order to explain the behavior of agents in different economies in Latin America and their economic development. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p1531&r=soc |
| By: | Zohal Hessami (Department of Economics, University of Konstanz, Germany) |
| Abstract: | So far no existing study has analyzed what determines people’s trust in the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO even though – in the absence of democratic accountability – this is one of the few ways to assess the legitimacy of these institutions. This study is intended to fill this gap in the literature based on Eurobarometer survey data from the EU-15 countries. The estimation results suggest that individual characteristics (gender, international background, formal education level, personal income, ideological preferences, interest in politics, and exposure to media) as well as the extent of globalization influence trust in the three international organizations. The state of the economy only has a significant effect on trust in the WTO. Moreover, respondents’ attitudes towards globalization have a bearing on trust in all three international organizations. Survey items on individual knowledge and perceptions of the WTO allow us to test additional hypotheses that apply to this institution alone. We find that familiarity with the WTO fosters trust. Finally, beliefs that the EU is well-represented in the WTO, that the WTO has a good reputation and that it is a democratic and necessary institution increases repondents’ propensity to trust the WTO. |
| Keywords: | Institutional trust, International economic organizations, Globalization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization |
| JEL: | F13 F15 F33 F53 O19 |
| Date: | 2011–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:knz:dpteco:1144&r=soc |
| By: | Francesco Pigliaru; Luciano Mauro |
| Abstract: | Since Putnam's work on social capital, the Italian regional case has been a very rich source of both data and theories about the origins of large and persistent differences in local stocks of social capital, and about the impact of such differences on economic performances. The Italian case is widely interpreted as supporting the idea that persistent regional divides are largely explained by local differences in social capital. In this paper we maintain that this interpretation fails to recognize that the current large regional gap in Italy is significantly linked to two policy decisions taken by the central State at the beginning of the 1970s. In particular, we focus on the possibility that social capital became a binding constraint for the growth of southern Italy’s mainly as a consequence of the deep process of governmental decentralization that began in the1970s. We formalize this hypothesis by using an endogenous growth model with public capital. In this model, the accumulation of public capital is characterized by the presence of iceberg costs that depend on social capital. Decentralization affects these costs because the impact of the local stocks of social capital on public investment increases when the latter is managed locally. To assess the role of decentralization as a trigger of the influence of local social capital on growth, we control for the impact of labor market reforms, a second and almost simultaneous institutional shock that took place in Italy and that made regional labor markets far more rigid than in the previous decades. In the second part of our paper, we use the large empirical literature on the Italian regions to restrict the values of the parameters of our model in order to perform a simple simulation exercise. In this exercise, the model turns out to be able to account for the major swings in the convergence of southern regions towards the center-northern regions since 1861. The general lessons we can draw from this further analysis of the Italian regional case are as follows. First, we show that the strength of social capital as a determinant of long-run growth may depend on some well-defined characteristic of the institutional context. Second, our model suggests that the economic success of decentralization policies -- even when the budget constraint is not 'soft' -- depends on the local endowment of social capital. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p1866&r=soc |
| By: | Ioannou, Christos A.; Qi, Shi; ,; Rustichini, Aldo |
| Abstract: | Group membership affects an agent's individual behavior. We determine how, by testing two competing hypotheses. One is that group membership operates through social identity, and the other is that group membership implements a correlation among the actions of in-group members in response to an implicit signal. We introduce two novel features in the experimental design. The first feature is the display of group outcomes. This allows us to assess directly the importance of relative group performance on subjects' decisions. The second is a careful manipulation of the Dictator game and the Trust game. More specifically, we choose parameters strategically so as to ensure no change in the pecuniary incentives across the two games. For a precise quantitative test of the two hypotheses we develop a structural model to describe an agent's behavior across treatments. Our findings suggest that the role of social identity on motivating agents' decisions has been exaggerated. The display of group outcomes induces a group effect, but a careful analysis of this effect reveals that participants use group outcomes as a signal to coordinate in-group members on favorable outcomes. Furthermore, we find evidence in support of recent experimental studies which demonstrate that an agent's allocation choice is sensitive to the behavior of the agent that generated the choice set. |
| Date: | 2011–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stn:sotoec:1106&r=soc |
| By: | Petri Ruuskanen; Tomi Kankainen |
| Abstract: | During the last decade, there has been wide agreement on the importance of dynamic capabilities on economic performance of firms. Simultaneously an increasing literature suggests that economic dynamics is embedded in social relations and social institutions. In this article, the determinants of dynamic capabilities of small manufacturing Finnish firms will be explored. Specifically we focus on the importance of social capital for firm dynamics. According to analysis, the most important antecedents of dynamic capabilities of firms are its strategy and social capital. Social capital as wide and active participation in network cooperation correlates statistically significantly with the firm dynamics. Social capital increases firm dynamics by enhancing communication and knowledge spillovers in corporate networks. Active networkers gain important information from their bridging and linking ties, such as other firms and public institutions. According to the analysis, the increase of trust in business relations does not correlate with the dynamic capabilities. Instead trust acts as a trigger factor when firms consider their network activities. Keywords: social capital, networks, trust, dynamic capabilities, small and medium sized enterprises |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p806&r=soc |
| By: | Paolo Rizzi; Roberta Pianta |
| Abstract: | The study of the Social Capital and its relationships with the development is a topical subject. The theme has not an exactly definition yet. Some proofs at national and regional levels in Europe show interactions between the Social Capital and the economic growth and the labour market. From them, the paper aims to analyze these results, trying to specify the significances. Applying the Principal Components Analysis to several interesting single variables (coming from the European Values Survey database), some macro-variables were created and inserted in regressions, producing partial results. These macro-components summarize the elements of the Social Capital and they are broken down as single variables. A benchmarking between subjective variables and quantitative ones is realized to explain the concept of the Social Capital, with the aim of consider the individual and collective insight and the concrete effects of this multi-dimensional idea. To fulfill the analysis, a remark is faced on the relationships between the Social Capital and the development, as the causality between them deserves further examinations. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p722&r=soc |
| By: | Tuba Cekic |
| Abstract: | Social capital is a common concept for both describing and understanding economical, political and social wellbeing of community. Although it has been defined by economists and sociologists; social capital concept is also highlighted in regional development strategies. Accordingly, assessing the role of social capital in regional development and the impact of social capital to economic growth by means of empirical and theoretical studies has been an important issue in the literature. The relation between social capital and regional economic development in Turkey, as a developing country, has been put forth as the main theme of this paper. The paper aims to provide an overview of the concept of social capital for regional development and discuss social capital in terms of social participation depending on the work of Robert Putnam. Although interregional disparities in Turkey have been studied by many academicians, revealing their relationship with participation is rather new. Searching for this relationship, indicators of social participation is converted to social capital index and regression analysis have been used to explore the relation between social capital and regional economic development. During the construction of indicies, principal component analysis and factor analysis is used to determine the weights of each indicator. Thus, this paper evaluates the social participation in NUTS II level regions in order to foreseen regional disparities in the context of economic development. At this point it has been asserted that social capital in regions both explains and is a result of regional economic development. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p184&r=soc |
| By: | Halkos, George; Jones, Nikoleta |
| Abstract: | The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of social factors (expressed as social norms, institutional and social trust and social networks) on the decision of individuals to pay for the protection of biodiversity. For this purpose an empirical study was carried out in two National Parks of Northern Greece. Three scenarios were proposed differing on the payment mechanism and the management actors (regulatory, market-based and community-based scenarios). Our empirical results show that social capital variables, especially social norms and social trust, have a strong influence both on the decision of individuals to pay and the specific amount stated. Specifically, we find that social norms have a positive influence for the willingness to pay (WTP) of individuals of a state-tax and an entrance fee (regulatory and market-based scenario respectively). Furthermore, social trust has a positive impact for the WTP through an entrance fee and a community tax (market-based and community-based scenario respectively). We also find a higher WTP of individuals towards the market based scenario where participation of citizens is higher compared to the current management status. Concerning the impact of demographic factors, we find that income does not influence the specific amount stated by individuals. |
| Keywords: | Social factors; willingness to pay; biodiversity; Greece |
| JEL: | C52 Q51 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34581&r=soc |
| By: | Christophe Muller (DEFI, Université de la Méditerranée); Marc Vothknecht (German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and Humboldt University Berlin) |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses the impact of violent conflict on social capital, as measured by citizen anticipation in community groups defined for four activity types: governance, social service, infrastructure development and risk-sharing. Combining household panel data from Indonesia with conflict event information, we find an overall decrease in citizen contributions in districts affected by group violence in the early post-Suharto transition period. However, participation in communities with a high degree of ethnic polarization is less strongly affected and even stimulated for local governance and risk-sharing activities. Moreover, individual engagement appears to be dependent on the involvement of other members from the own ethnic group, which points to emphases on bonding social networks in the presence of violence. Finally, in conflict regions, the wealthier households are more likely to engage into cooperative and infrastructure improvement activities, while they are dropping from security groups. On the contrary, the poorest households get more involved in social service activities and less in infrastructure groups. Our results illustrate the danger of generalizations when dealing with violence impact on community activities. We found a large variety of responses depending on the considered activity and its expected economic or social function. We also found large observed and unobserved individual heterogeneities of the effect of violent conflict on activity participation. Once an appropriate nomenclature of activities is used and intensive controls for observed and unobserved heterogeneity are performed, we found that some activities can actually be stimulated by conflict situations. In this respect, the ethnic configuration of society seems to be central in understanding this type of social capital building. |
| Keywords: | Violent Conflict, Citizen Participation, Local Public Goods |
| JEL: | D74 H42 O11 |
| Date: | 2011–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iep:wpidep:1101&r=soc |
| By: | Beatrix Brügger; Rafael Lalive; Andreas Steinhauer; Josef Zweimüller |
| Abstract: | Can different social groups develop different demands for social insurance of risks to health and work? We study this issue across language groups in Switzerland. Language defines social groups and Swiss language groups are separated by a clear geographic border. Actual levels of social insurance are identical on either side of the within state segments of the language border. We can therefore study the role of culture in shaping the demand for social insurance. Specifically, we contrast at the language border actual voting decisions on country-wide changes to social insurance programs. Key results indicate substantially higher support for expansions of social insurance among residents of Latin-speaking (i.e. French, Italian, or Romansh) border municipalities compared to their German-speaking neighbors in adjacent municipalities. We consider three possible explanations for this finding: informal insurance, ideology, and the media. We find that informal insurance does not vary enough to explain stark differences in social insurance. However, differences in ideology and segmented media markets are potentially important explanatory factors. |
| Keywords: | Culture, language, preferences for social insurance, spatial regression discontinuity |
| JEL: | J21 J64 Z10 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:041&r=soc |
| By: | Leonardo Becchetti (Department of Economics, Universitˆ Tor Vergata) |
| Abstract: | The vote with the wallet is a new, emerging feature of economic participation and democracy in the globally-integrated market economy. This expression identifies the pivotal role that responsible consumption and investment can play in addressing social and environmental emergencies which have been aggravated by the asymmetry of power between domestic institutions and global corporations. In this paper, we examine (both in general and by using examples drawn from the financial and non-financial sectors) how ÒvotingÓ for producers which are at the forefront of a three-sided efficiency which reconciles the creation of economic value with social and environmental responsibility, may generate contagion effects by triggering ethical imitation of traditional profit-maximizing actors, thereby enhancing the production of positive social and environmental externalities. Within this new framework policies which reduce the search and information costs of voting with the wallet may help socioeconomic systems to exploit the bottom-up market forces of other-regarding preferences, thereby enhancing opportunities to achieve well-being with reduced top-down government intervention |
| Keywords: | social responsibility, other regarding preferences. |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ent:wpaper:wp33&r=soc |
| By: | Ailenei Dorel; Mosora Cosmin |
| Abstract: | Romania has the highest share of EU rural areas (44.9% ), which generates and maintains a long series of regional disparities. Because of these disparities, the economy faces a number of elements that undermine the quality of human and social capital and reduces the potential for growth: precarious social and economic infrastructure, reduced access to markets and thus to goods, a low level of both economic cohesion and living standards, and a difficult access to education and training. During the communist era, a forcefully reduction of the rural share was undertaken through various means, most often destructive . Even the transition to a market economy has failed to improve the situation because, in recent years, the urban-rural migration flows have surpassed the rural-urban flows making the too large rural share problem to block the structural changes needed on one hand to modernize the economy, and on the other hand for the European integration. When analyzing the use structure of work resources we observe even greater differences, especially on account of population employed in agriculture. From this perspective, the authors consider that the program impact of sustaining local action groups, LEADER+, extends beyond the horizon of the National Plan of Rural Development , tending to a medium or even long run, when the rural problem of Romania can be solved. Thus the local action groups can contribute to urban areas revitalization and development, through the promotion of economic activities in adjacent rural areas in a manner similar to Lösch's theory. The authors effectuate a diagnosis of the Romanian rural problem and its negative effects. In this framework the implementation progress of local action groups in Romania will be reviewed by testing the main factors that contributed to the organization of local action groups in certain regions of the country. Key words: local action groups, regional disparities, economic cohesion, structural changes. JEL classification: O18, R11. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p1136&r=soc |