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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2015‒10‒25
eleven papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Colussi, Tommaso (IZA) |
| Abstract: | This paper employs a unique dataset on articles, authors and editors of the top general interest journals in economics to investigate the role of social connections in the publication process. Ties between editors and authors are identified based on their academic histories. Results show that an editor's former PhD students and faculty colleagues experience an increase in their publication outcomes when this editor is in charge of a journal. The analysis of articles' citations suggests that connections ultimately improve the quality of published papers. |
| Keywords: | academia, networks, human capital |
| JEL: | A1 I23 J24 |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9414&r=all |
| By: | Mariana Blanco; Juan Camilo Cárdenas |
| Abstract: | At the end of a controlled experiment where research assistants were hired for coding news from online newspapers, the experimenter-employer asked a number of them to roll a die and report the result in order to be paid in cash an amount linear on the reported number from 1 to 6 that could go from 1.6 to 9.4 USD. Another (control) group of similar students, recruited in a similar manner, were also invited to perform the same die-roll task, but they had no prior labor relationship with the experimenter-employer. Our treatment group showed in average higher levels of honesty as their distribution of reported numbers was less skewed to the right, that is, the long-term labor relationship group was more likely to report numbers that are closer to the uniform (honest) distribution than our control, and than other reported numbers in this kind of experiments. We conjecture that the previous experimenter-subject relationship of the treatment group induced higher levels of honesty among the participants. One of the possible reasons is that the labor relationship created for the group of ”treatment” students included a series of shocks that involved the possibility of involuntary unemployment, bringing incentives for the students to signal honesty as a trait that could be valued in the labor market. This paper contributes to the growing literature on understanding the motives for honesty and cheating. |
| Keywords: | Honesty, Cheating, Labor relationships, Unemployment, Experiments |
| JEL: | D73 C93 D01 E24 J24 |
| Date: | 2015–10–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000092:013883&r=all |
| By: | Edward L. Glaeser; Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto; Yimei Zou |
| Abstract: | Should China build mega-cities or a network of linked middle-sized metropolises? Can Europe's mid-sized cities compete with global agglomeration by forging stronger inter-urban links? This paper examines these questions within a model of recombinant growth and endogenous local amenities. Three primary factors determine the trade-off between networks and big cities: local returns to scale in innovation, the elasticity of housing supply, and the importance of local amenities. Even if there are global increasing returns, the returns to local scale in innovation may be decreasing, and that makes networks more appealing than mega-cities. Inelastic housing supply makes it harder to supply more space in dense confines, which perhaps explains why networks are more popular in regulated Europe than in the American Sunbelt. Larger cities can dominate networks because of amenities, as long as the benefits of scale overwhelm the downsides of density. In our framework, the skilled are more likely to prefer mega-cities than the less skilled, and the long-run benefits of either mega-cities or networks may be quite different from the short-run benefits. |
| Keywords: | Cities, Networks, Growth, Migration |
| JEL: | R10 R58 F15 O18 |
| Date: | 2015–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:1489&r=all |
| By: | Eriksson,Lina Maria Jorun |
| Abstract: | Social norms affect almost every aspect of people?s lives, and can be an obstacle to or support economic development. This paper outlines what social norms are and how they work, providing examples from everyday life and from development case studies. Sometimes not much can be done about changing undesirable social norms. In those cases, development economists need to be aware of how the existence of those norms can impact the effects of the policies they advocate. But of particular importance to development economists is the ways in which social norms can be changed, at least under some circumstances. Understanding of social norm change is still patchy at best, but the paper outlines the theoretical underpinnings of change, with empirical evidence from various policies aimed at changing social norms. However, some of those policies raise ethical concerns that would require attention. |
| Keywords: | Gender and Social Development,Access to Finance,Population Policies,Ethics&Belief Systems,Anthropology |
| Date: | 2015–10–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7450&r=all |
| By: | Markussen Thomas |
| Abstract: | This paper exploits five waves of the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) to investigate issues of social and political capital in rural Viet Nam. I analyse membership of the Communist Party, `mass organizations´ (Farmers´ Union, Women. |
| Keywords: | Economic development, Families, Household surveys, Households, Intergovernmental fiscal relations, Labor unions, Land tenure, Local government, Microeconomics, Social capital (Sociology) |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2015-087&r=all |
| By: | Joan Esteban; Gilat Levy; Laura Mayoral |
| Abstract: | In this paper we study the role of religiosity and individual liberties in influencing the choice of labor effort. To a standard model with consumption and effort, we add a third (public) good: civil liberties with a cap established by law. We assume that the higher the degree of religiosity of an individual the less he likes liberties, such as divorce, abortion, gender parity, or gay marriage. With standard assumptions on individual preferences, our model implies that individual labor supply is decreasing in the level of personal religiosity and that this negative relationship is enhanced by the width of liberties. We show empirically that this holds and that the size of the effect is large. Specifically, we construct an index of civil liberties and find solid evidence in support of the joint effect of religiosity and liberties on labor effort. |
| Keywords: | religiosity, civil liberties, labor supply |
| JEL: | Z12 J22 |
| Date: | 2015–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:843&r=all |
| By: | Yannis Ioannides |
| Abstract: | In a world where individuals interact in myriads of ways, one wonders how the benefits of one's connections with others compare with those conferred by individual characteristics when it comes to acquisition of human capital. It is particularly interesting to be able to distinguish between connections that are the outcome of deliberate decisions by individuals and connections being given exogenously and beyond an individual's control. The paper explores the consequences of the joint evolution of social connections and human capital investments. It thus allows one to study a broad range of possibilities in which social connections may influence inequality in consumption, human capital invest- ment and welfare across the members of the economy, cross-sectionally and intertemporally. It embeds inequality analysis in models of endogenous social network formation. The novelty of the model lies in its joint treatment of human capital investment and social network formation in intergenerational settings, while distinguishing between the case of impact on human capital from endogenous as opposed to exogenous social networking. Among several results in the case of exogenous connections, we demonstrate conditions under which the limit distribution of human capital has a Pareto upper tail. One of the dynamic models we develop allow for intergenerational transfers in a dynastic version of the infinite horizon Ramsey- Cass-Koopmans model. The models share the property that human capital accumulation, transfers and social connections, when all are optimized, are, along steady states, proportional to cognitive skills. Thus, intergenerational transfers of both human capital endowments and social networking endowments are jointly determined. Interestingly, the consequences for inequality of the endogeneity of social connections are underscored by examining the models when they are assumed to be exogenous. When social connections are not optimized, individuals' human capital reflect a much more general dependence on social connections. We show that the dynamics of demographically increasingly complex models, as expressed by a sequence of models with increasing number of overlapping-generations, depend on the product of the adjacency matrices associated with each of the overlapping generations. |
| JEL: | C21 C23 C31 C35 C72 Z13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tuf:tuftec:0814&r=all |
| By: | Roman M. Sheremeta (Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University and Economic Science Institute, Chapman University) |
| Abstract: | Group contests are ubiquitous. Some examples include warfare between countries, competition between political parties, team-incentives within firms, group sports, and rent-seeking. In order to succeed, members of the same group have incentives to cooperate with each other by expending individual efforts. However, since effort is costly, each member also has an incentive to abstain from expending any effort and instead free-ride on the efforts of other members. Contest theory shows that the intensity of competition between groups and the amount of freeriding within groups depend on the group size, sharing rule, group impact function, contest success function, and heterogeneity of players. We review experimental studies testing these theoretical predictions. Almost all studies of behavior in group contests find significant overexpenditure of effort relative to the theory. We discuss potential explanations for such overexpenditure, including the utility of winning, bounded rationality, relative payoff maximization, parochial altruism, and social identity. Despite over-expenditure, most studies find support for the comparative statics predictions of the theory (with the exception of the “group size paradox”). Finally, studies show that there are effective mechanisms that can promote withingroup cooperation and conflict resolution mechanisms that can de-escalate and potentially eliminate between-group conflict. |
| Keywords: | groups, contests, experiments |
| JEL: | C7 C9 D7 H4 J4 K4 L2 M5 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:15-21&r=all |
| By: | Anna Mironova (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the relation between trust as the element of social capital and individual subjective life satisfaction. It answers the question of whether trustful people are happier than suspicious people. Using the concept of social capital, we consider three main types of trust: general, institutional and social. The article estimates the level of trust in Russia using data from value research in two federal districts in Russia. This research was conducted by the Centre for Comparative Social Research in summer 2012. The main hypothesis, that there a positive relationship between the level of trust and subjective life satisfaction, was tested using the method of structural equation modelling. |
| Keywords: | social capital, trust, subjective life satisfaction. |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:42psy2015&r=all |
| By: | E. Lance Howe (Department of Economics and Public Policy, University of Alaska Anchorage); James J. Murphy (Department of Economics and Public Policy, University of Alaska Anchorage and Institute of State Economy, Nankai University and Economic Science Institute, Chapman University); Drew Gerkey (Department of Anthropology, School of Language, Culture & Society, Oregon State University); Colin Thor West (Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina) |
| Abstract: | Integrating information from existing research, qualitative ethnographic interviews, and 3 participant observation, we designed a field experiment that introduces idiosyncratic 4 environmental risk and a voluntary sharing decision into a standard public goods game. Conducted 5 with subsistence resource users in rural villages in remote Kamchatka Russia, we find evidence 6 consistent with a model of indirect reciprocity and local social norms of helping the needy. When 7 experiments allow participants to develop reputations, as is the case in most small-scale societies, 8 we find that sharing is increasingly directed toward individuals experiencing hardship, good 9 reputations increase aid, and risk-pooling becomes more effective. Our results highlight the 10 importance of investigating social and ecological factors, beyond strategic risk, that affect the 11 balance between independence and interdependence when developing and testing theories of 12 cooperation. |
| Keywords: | experimental economics, field experiment, public goods, risk-pooling, resource sharing, team production |
| JEL: | D70 H41 D81 C93 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:15-20&r=all |
| By: | E. Lance Howe (Department of Economics, University of Alaska Anchorage); James J. Murphy (Department of Economics, University of Alaska Anchorage; Institute of State Economy, Nankai University; Economic Science Institute, Chapman University); Drew Gerkey (Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University); Colin T. West (Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina) |
| Abstract: | Integrating information from existing research, qualitative ethnographic interviews, and participant observation, we designed a field experiment that introduces idiosyncratic environmental risk and a voluntary sharing decision into a standard public goods game. Conducted with subsistence resource users in rural villages in remote Kamchatka Russia, we find evidence consistent with a model of indirect reciprocity and local social norms of helping the needy. When experiments allow participants to develop reputations, as is the case in most small-scale societies, we find that sharing is increasingly directed toward individuals experiencing hardship, good reputations increase aid, and risk-pooling becomes more effective. Our results highlight the importance of investigating social and ecological factors, beyond strategic risk, that affect the balance between independence and interdependence when developing and testing theories of cooperation. |
| Keywords: | experimental economics, field experiment, public goods, risk-pooling, resource sharing, team production |
| JEL: | D70 H41 D81 |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ala:wpaper:2015-04&r=all |